Twitch Marketing: What Brands Get Wrong

Most brands still approach Twitch as a niche gaming platform, and most brands are wrong. Rahwa Dagnew, influencer marketing specialist at Wenderfalck, a Stockholm-based creative communications agency with a track record working with major consumer and global brands across the Nordic market, has spent five years running cross-channel influencer campaigns. She knows what the platform can and cannot do, and where marketers consistently misread it.

From the live format’s role in building unusually high-engagement communities, to the case for starting small and earning creative trust before locking in long-term partnerships, Rahwa offers a grounded, experience-led perspective on what it actually takes to make Twitch work for a brand.

How has Twitch evolved as a platform, and where are its strengths and weaknesses today?

Twitch has evolved from being a gaming-first live streaming platform to being much broader than that. We are now talking about entertainment and an entire community ecosystem. And with that comes the cross-platform reality, where a lot of the creators we work with are very active in their Discord channels as well, which is telling of how it has become this community-based ecosystem.

That is Twitch’s biggest strength: a very highly engaged audience, strong creator communities, and real-time interaction. These creators are really at the pulse of culture. If you are doing Twitch right as a brand, you can genuinely tap into that and become part of those moments when things just start to bubble.

On the weaknesses side, as marketers we are heavily based on numbers, data, and KPIs, and that can be tricky with Twitch. A lot of streams and videos disappear after a period of time, so if you want to look at what a creator has been doing over the past month, you do not always have all that data at hand. That affects creator discovery as well.

And on a broader level, there is a scalability question. Twitch communities are quite niche, so if you want scale, it is hard to achieve that on Twitch alone. You would need to look at multiple platforms to build that kind of reach. As a brand or agency, if broad reach is a priority, we look for creators who are active across multiple platforms, with Twitch as part of that mix rather than the whole of it.

Is the community-based ecosystem what really sets Twitch apart from other social platforms today?

The live aspect does something very specific. When you are the first to know something, when you are there as it is happening, that creates community. And it creates a very highly engaged one.

You see the same dynamic in other contexts. In journalism, being first matters. At a store opening, people line up because they want to be where it is happening. Twitch has that same quality, and because the platform started from that place, it has become ingrained in its DNA in a way that other platforms with added live features have not managed to replicate.

And then there is the shared experience element. On Twitch, you are not just engaging with the live streamer, you are engaging in the chat with everyone else at the same time.

What does that mean practically for a brand approaching Twitch for the first time? How does it change how you structure a campaign?

If you are used to working with influencer marketing in general, you already understand that it is a co-creation. The creator has built something independently, which is what makes them valuable, and you as a brand are the expert on your product and your key messages.

For Twitch specifically, you need to lean into that even more. Give greater flexibility rather than working from rigid scripts, because the live aspect and the community nature of the platform are exactly what you are there to tap into. Trust them. Ask them directly: what do you think would engage your followers here? Many creators have built their own infrastructure, whether that is Discord communities, weekly competitions, or recurring content concepts. Ask how your campaign could tap into what they have already built.

Those conversations produce the best ideas, ones you would not think of yourself, often because something happened in a live chat and was not recorded anywhere. That is the kind of thing that makes a brand collaboration feel authentic.

Brands often worry about loss of control in live environments. How do you address that concern?

With any collaboration, the starting point is the same: get to know the creator, get to know the person, and make sure they are aligned with your brand values. If budget and time allow, book meetings with the creator before the campaign to really work through what it is for and what they need to deliver.

And I think it would be naive to tell a brand to simply trust the creator and let go completely. You are paying for this, and you should get out of it what you need. Doing your due diligence with research and understanding the creator properly is the right approach.

My view with long-term ambassadorships is the same: do not sign someone long-term if you have never worked with them before. Run one campaign first. See how they work. A lot of it is also behind the scenes: how professional are they, how agile, how genuinely invested in making the collaboration succeed? How is the content actually resonating with their audience? Once you have seen all of that, then you can move towards longer partnerships. Some campaigns simply do not allow that lead time, and that is a real challenge.