Just Born's MIKE AND IKE® brand has renewed its partnership with esports organization Dignitas for a fifth consecutive year, capping the milestone with a multi-event national campaign called "We Got'chew™" that runs through the fall Fortnite competitive season. For confectionery brands watching non-traditional marketing channels, this renewal is a useful data point on how consistent gaming investment converts into measurable category authority.
Why Operators Should Care
When MIKE AND IKE® first signed with Dignitas in July 2022, it was the organization's first Fortnite-focused brand partnership — an experiment by a legacy candy label to reach a younger, engagement-heavy audience outside traditional retail media. Four years later, the brand is claiming the position of the number-one non-endemic brand in the Fortnite ecosystem, with billions of impressions delivered and activations at more than ten major gaming events. That trajectory matters to food and beverage marketers who are still treating gaming sponsorships as one-off awareness plays rather than sustained brand-building channels. The data here suggests compounding returns when the partnership is integrated consistently — from in-person lounges to UEFN map design to creator-hosted tournament streams.
The Campaign Structure
The "We Got'chew™" activation has three distinct components that illustrate how a CPG brand can ladder from grassroots to premium exposure. First, a two-day Flavor Brawl Bootcamp hosted at the University of Texas at Dallas' Comet LANding Center on August 8th gives amateur Fortnite players structured coaching alongside branded product integration — a sampling environment with high dwell time and genuine fan intent. Second, a series of DIGFort Community Tournaments powered by MIKE AND IKE® will culminate before the FNCS Worlds event on September 26–27, driving sustained social promotion across Discord and X. Third, the flagship MIKE AND IKE® Presents Flavor Brawl tournament in October will be streamed live by creator AussieAntics on Twitch with dedicated broadcast segments and custom UEFN map branding — effectively a branded content production at the scale of a television sponsorship, but targeting an audience that ad-blockers and cord-cutting have made difficult to reach through conventional media.
Signals for Food & Beverage Brands
For procurement and marketing teams at snack and confectionery brands, this renewal offers three actionable intelligence points. Gaming partnerships have evolved well past logo placement: the Dignitas structure now includes physical event space (the Fortnite House lounge), creator talent management, map development, and community tournament infrastructure — a full-funnel activation suite that competes directly with what a regional experiential agency would build. Brands entering gaming sponsorships today are buying into ecosystems, not just impressions. Second, the sweepstakes element — awarding two fans an all-expense-paid trip to Fortnite Worlds with POV cameras — functions as a user-generated content engine, generating authentic footage that the brand can amplify at minimal incremental cost. Third, anchoring renewal announcements to competitive calendar moments (FNCS Worlds, fall tournament season) demonstrates that food brands with disciplined media planning can capture gaming's highest-traffic windows the same way they would plan around the Super Bowl or back-to-school.
For F&B brands evaluating non-endemic sponsorships, the MIKE AND IKE® and Dignitas model is now a five-year case study in patient, community-first brand building — the kind of long arc that retail and distribution teams increasingly want to see before committing shelf space to a challenger brand. It also points to the growing role of experiential and event-based sampling as a complement to programmatic spend, particularly for products targeting the 18–34 demographic.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
