Youtube promotional video that discussed and promoted the brand of Bemani Lounge. This was shot and edited by me.
SUMMARY
As a part owner, brand manager, and creative director of Bemani Lounge, I oversaw a retro gaming store in New Jersey and an online community focused on retro video games and the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game. Our operations included a competitive Yu-Gi-Oh! team, an e-commerce business selling secondary market cards and games, and a growing social media presence. I developed the brand's identity, content, and business model, ensuring consistent messaging across all channels. My responsibilities included community management and growth, as well as marketing and content creation.
BRAND DESIGN
The Bemani Lounge logo and brand identity was designed by me. The majority owner wanted to have a regal shield and knight aesthetic. That direction was enhanced by the modern take I applied to the concept. Our initial starting point was to focus on the online Yu-Gi-Oh! gaming community which is why elements like the stack of cards was included in the design. I also wanted a design that had utility and worked in multiple colors as well as a one color printing to keep t-shirt printing costs down.
This is a brand guide packet I put together. I created the brand to be inclusive and to make members of our community feel like they were a part of something. I put together this guide to help any designers, creators, or people from our community that wanted to help out on a regular basis keep a consistent brand look and feel across the board.
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT
I was in charge of managing and generating content for our social media platforms. This included Youtube and Facebook. I also managed a podcast that I produced as well as a Facebook group.
The above images showcase photography that was either captured by me or submitted by members of our community that was used in our content marketing efforts. I also generated promotional images for winners of our online tournaments to help market our events and the prize support offered to other players outside of our community. These were also great for keeping members in the community engaged and involved.
Promotional video for our online tournament that offered a PS4 & XBox as prize support.
Promotional video for our online tournament that offered a 3 boxes of a Yu-Gi-Oh! set.
YOUTUBE CONTENT CREATION & MANAGEMENT
A vlog style video that I shot and edited. This was created to showcase the van travel aspect of our business and the lifestyle it included to potential customers.
I developed the concept for a branded Yu-Gi-Oh! Live Dueling series for our Youtube channel called "Bemani Lounge IRL Duels". This was done to promote our community and it's members to a wider audience. These also proved to be our best performing videos in terms of views, engagement, subscriber growth, click through rate, and watch time. I reached out to various card store owners to get them to sponsor the videos and I would travel to different local stores including our own to get various members of the Bemani Lounge community and the overall Yu-Gi-Oh! community to participate. I handled scheduling, production, post production, editing, plus graphic and graphic design.
Above is the thumbnail for this particular IRL Duel video alongside images of the multi-camera setup used to put the video together.
I wanted our community to be involved so I took the approach of putting players first in regards to Bemani Lounge branding and marketing. In addition to the previously shown brand guide I also created a guide for content creation for any Bemani Lounge member who wanted to seriously contribute to our youtube channel. This would help members of our Competitive Yu-Gi-Oh! team and Bemani Lounge community grow to be regular hosts of shows and series that I would manage and oversee the production of.
The above image showcases the first draft of a creative outline that I put together for our Youtube content. This included video concepts, details and descriptions, schedules, and available contributors.
