Earlier this week North American esports and gaming lifestyle company FaZe Clan revealed a collaboration with DC Comics to promote the Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point six-issue limited comic book series from Epic Games and DC. The series which launched on Tuesday was co-written by Epic CCO Donald Mustard and Christos Gage, with art by Reilly Brown.
In a deal with DC, FaZe Clan put together a special campaign called “Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point x FaZe Clan Deathrun,” a week-long event featuring a custom-made, Deathrun map inside Fortnite’s Creative Mode. The map, made by YouTube content creator JDuth, is at the center of the campaign, which includes a speedrun contest for Fortnite players using the map that runs until June 7, and a special live stream on Twitch with FaZe Clan’s Nate Hill on Thursday at 11 a.m. ET/ 8 a.m. PT.
FaZe Clan Head of Marketing Xavier Ramos spoke to FortuneZ on Wednesday about the deal with DC, and about its plans for possible collaborations with the company in the future.
As for how the deal came to fruition, Ramos said that it came down to an existing relationship he has with DC; he worked at Warner Bros. Records for more than 16 years in several executive marketing roles and has continued to talk to friends at Warner companies on a regular basis even after he joined FaZe Clan more than two years ago.
“I have a longstanding relationship with DC Comics,” he said. ” I started at FaZe Clan two years ago, and before that, I was head of marketing at Warner Bros. Records and had done a few projects with DC Comics, the film company, and a bunch of other properties. One of my longtime friends there is Matt Keller, who is the director of marketing strategy at DC, and we’ve done some stuff together in the past. Since I have been at FaZe we talk on a pretty regular basis, so the topic of ‘what’s the right project for us to do together’ comes up a lot in our calls.”
While that relationship was an important part of closing the deal, Ramos emphasized that a lot of FaZe’s management, players, and its 90+ content creators, are big fans of DC. That’s something Ramos says drives a lot of the collaborations the organization does on a regular basis: they are fans of the brands and companies they have done deals with in the past like G Shock, Xbox, and Beats by Dre.
The deal with DC took off on April 1, after one of Ramos’ monthly calls with Keller. The conversation turned to a comic book collaboration between DC and Epic, and the two started brainstorming on what things they could do together to promote it to the FaZe community and within Fortnite itself.
“So, there was a lot of just general conversation about what we could do together, and when DC decided to do this series with Donald Mustard/Epic, it felt like the perfect opportunity for us because we have the biggest Fortnite pros and content creators on the planet. So Matt brought this project up to me on April 1 we got to work.”
They kicked around the idea of creating a map within the game, inspired by a previous event with FaZe Sway that performed pretty well and was well received by the community, according to Ramos.
“We had done something with FaZe Sway a few weeks earlier, a promotion where we created a custom map and had a huge competition that over-performed in a big way in the community. So I suggested something similar to Matt and he said, ‘why don’t we put together, a DC comics, custom-built map’ within Fortnite that uses content from the comic book series and then have Nate Hill do a live stream.”
Finally, when asked if FaZe was working on any future collaborations with DC, Ramos said that people should be on the lookout for something in a “few months” and that there are a lot of ideas currently being discussed between the two companies.
“I would say, mark your calendars for something really cool,” Ramos said. “Secondly, we’re super excited about continuing to do really unique activations and potential merchandise collaborations, gaming activations, and tournaments. There are a ton of ideas that are on the table right now.”
(Photo : FaZe Clan)
