São Paulo, August 2026 — For players, games can be entertainment and a lifestyle. For brands, however, what is at stake is an increasingly valuable market, as the global gaming industry is expected to surpass $200 billion in the coming years, according to Newzoo, a leading market research company in the sector. In Brazil, nearly 80% of the population consumes some form of gaming content, according to Pesquisa Game Brasil.
Despite the scale of the opportunity, many companies still enter the gaming space without understanding its culture. As a result, they launch campaigns that rely on stereotypes, treat players as a homogeneous community, and reduce games to yet another space for media buying.
Visceral was created to change that game. Founded by Rodrigo Friggi, Marcelo Rizério, Caio Del Manto, and Tiago Santos, the consultancy specializes in business strategy, culture, and communities. Its partners bring complementary backgrounds in gaming, advertising, branding, strategy, creativity, and media, helping brands that want to connect with this audience fully immerse themselves in one of the world’s most valuable industries.
Brands such as Hellmann’s, ExitLag, and Prime Video are already betting on Visceral’s “The Business Game” methodology, which promises more than simply placing a brand inside a game, sponsoring a tournament, or hiring a creator. The proposal is to understand the gaming ecosystem in its deepest essence: as a major business made up of different cultures, behaviors, and communities.
“For some time, the market invested in and even learned how to buy the attention of people who play games. But attention is not the same as belonging. Games are not a passing trend or simply another media channel. They are cultural spaces, with codes and communities that can change completely from one game to another. To generate results, you need to understand who is behind each avatar,” explains Friggi.
Among the company’s founders, Friggi brings more than a decade of experience in the industry and a direct relationship with some of the country’s largest gaming communities. During his time at Riot Games, one of the world’s largest and most valuable game development companies, he led projects including the launches of Arcane and VALORANT, as well as the rebranding of CBLOL, Brazil’s leading League of Legends championship.
This experience helped identify one of the main problems Visceral aims to address: the gap between the image many brands still have of the gaming audience and the way players themselves see their identity.
“Many players do not even identify with the label ‘gamer.’ When a campaign starts from a superficial or stereotypical view, the community immediately notices and does not see itself represented in it. Our proposal is not to choose between culture and performance. It is to show that, in order to drive conversion, you first need to create real value,” Friggi adds.
Visceral will operate across areas including branding, advertising, creators, esports, social media, cultural research, phygital experiences, and community intelligence. The consultancy will also develop strategies capable of transforming one-off investments into a consistent and relevant presence within the ecosystem. Although gaming is its first area of expertise, the company’s methodology can also be applied to other equally complex cultural communities that remain poorly understood by brands.
Website: visceral.biz
