CASE FILE — SANTANDER × LEC DREAM BOT
Real-Time Technical Activation · Community Integration
How Santander turned passive broadcast viewership into active brand interaction — triggered by live in-game moments across Discord servers.
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CASE FILE: N. REMIS — LEAD INVESTIGATOR
I've Watched Campaigns Die Up Close.
This Is What I Learned.
Not a theory borrowed from a textbook. Not a framework built in a vacuum. Sixteen years of being in the room when marketing campaigns succeeded, failed, and sometimes died for reasons nobody on the team could name.
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How Santander Built a Brand Interaction That Only Existed When the Game Made It Happen
Discord servers. In-game reward codes distributed. Community reactions. A banking brand in esports, activated not through advertising but through live game state data. A forensic breakdown of what real-time technical integration requires — and why it works when passive sponsorship doesn't.
Client
Santander
League
LEC — League of Legends EMEA Championship
Format
LEC Summer Split + Finals
Industry
Financial Services
Campaign Type
Real-time Discord bot activation · In-game trigger integration · Prize distribution mechanics · Talent-led promotion
Platforms
Discord · Twitch · In-game API
Talent
Sjokz (LEC host)
Service
Campaign Coordination (The Morgue)
THE CONTEXT
Santander had a problem that most financial services brands share in esports: the category has no natural cultural adjacency to competitive gaming. Energy drinks belong. Snacks belong. Fast food belongs. Banking does not — not because the audience doesn't use banks, but because banking is the part of adult life that gaming culture exists partly to escape.
Passive sponsorship in that context is tolerated, not welcomed. A Santander logo on the broadcast frame is seen and forgotten. A Santander brand message read by a caster generates mild audience irritation at best. The brand is present but not engaging — and in esports, presence without engagement is money spent without community built.
The Dream Bot was designed to solve that problem from the inside out. Instead of placing Santander's brand next to the game, it placed Santander's brand inside the game's live moments — triggered by in-game events (first Baron, game milestones) that the audience was
already watching for, already reacting to, already emotionally invested in at the exact moment the brand appeared.
It didn't interrupt the audience's relationship with the game. It used the game as the trigger.
THE CHALLENGE
Real-time technical activations in live esports have a failure profile that content campaigns don't: when something breaks during a live broadcast, it breaks in front of everyone simultaneously, with no pause and no edit available.
The Dream Bot's core mechanic — rewards triggered by specific in-game moments during LEC broadcasts — required three separate technical systems to function correctly and simultaneously in real time: live game
state data (in-game API), Twitch broadcast monitoring, and Discord bot infrastructure across registered servers.
A failure in any one of those systems during a live Finals broadcast meant rewards didn't distribute, community servers went dark, and the activation's primary value proposition — instant, game-triggered
interaction — disappeared at the moment it was most visible.
The coordination challenge extended beyond the technical. Sjokz, as LEC's primary host, was the talent chosen to explain and endorse the bot in promotional content — a high-visibility choice that required careful brief management to ensure her explanation of the mechanic was accurate, accessible to non-technical viewers, and genuinely enthusiastic rather than scripted.
The community integration challenge was equally precise: 150 Discord servers meant 150 separate server environments, each with different moderation setups, different community cultures, and different technical configurations that the bot needed to function correctly within. Managing that distribution — ensuring the bot worked
consistently across all rather than reliably in the few that were tested — required operational rigour that no amount of creative strategy compensates for.
And the reward mechanic itself — in-game codes distributed as prizes — required inventory management, distribution logic, and eligibility verification running correctly in real time during broadcasts where the pace of the game, not a production schedule, determined when codes were triggered and distributed.
THE INVESTIGATION
Scope
✦ End-to-end planning, development oversight, and launch coordination of the Santander Dream Bot activation across the LEC Summer Split and Finals
✦ Technical integration coordination across three platforms:
— Discord bot development and deployment across registered servers — server setup, configuration management, and distribution logistics
— In-game moment trigger setup: coordination of game state data integration for real-time event detection
— Twitch broadcast alignment: ensuring bot activation timing synchronised with live broadcast moments visible to the audience
✦ Reward mechanics coordination:
— in-game reward codes: inventory management, distribution logic, and eligibility handling across all participating Discord servers
— Prize raffle integration into the live viewing experience — timing, trigger conditions, and winner notification workflows
✦ Sjokz talent coordination:
— Briefing and alignment for promotional video content explaining the Dream Bot mechanic to the LEC audience — Content approval and brand alignment review to ensure accuracy of technical explanation without reducing accessibility for non-technical viewers
✦ Community messaging and promotional strategy: pre-activation server onboarding communications, during-broadcast engagement messaging, and post-activation community follow-up across all 150 registered Discord servers
✦ Timeline and milestone management across all technical, talent, and community deliverables — including contingency coordination for live-event problem solving when real-time conditions required immediate decisions
KEY FINDINGS
01 —
The most effective brand integrations use the content as the trigger, not the interruption. Every previous sponsorship format places the brand adjacent to the moment the audience cares about — logo on the frame while the Baron is being contested, ad break after the teamfight. The Dream Bot placed Santander inside the moment: the reward appeared because the Baron was taken. The audience's emotional peak and the brand's activation were the same event. Community reactions is the measurable result of that alignment. Passive sponsorship of the same broadcast moments would have generated a fraction of that engagement at multiples of the coordination cost.
02 —
Real-time technical activations require operational precision that cannot be improvised under live conditions. Codes distributed correctly across servers during live broadcasts means the infrastructure worked every time the game triggered it. That reliability isn't a technical achievement in isolation — it's the product of coordination rigour in the setup phase, before any broadcast went live. Problem-solving under live-event conditions is a documented skill for a reason: the margin for recovery during a Finals broadcast is measured in seconds, not hours.
03 —
Community infrastructure scales brand presence in ways talent reach alone cannot. Discord servers means separate community environments where Santander's activation was present, functional, and generating reactions simultaneously. No talent partnership produces that distribution footprint without the underlying infrastructure to support it. Sjokz provided the credibility signal. The server distribution provided the reach. Neither worked without the other — and the coordination layer between them was what made both deliver at the same time.
THE RESULTS
Operational delivery: Dream Bot deployed and operational across all registered Discord servers before the LEC Summer Split began. Real-time trigger system functional
throughout Summer Split and Finals broadcasts without reported infrastructure failures. All in-game codes distributed correctly. Sjokz promotional content delivered and published on schedule.
Long-term impact: The Dream Bot repositioned Santander from passive broadcast sponsor to active community participant — a distinction the LEC audience registers immediately and that no amount of logo placement achieves. The activation demonstrated that financial services brands can earn genuine esports community engagement when the
integration mechanic is built around what the audience is already doing — watching the game — rather than interrupting it.
For Santander, the proof of concept was the result that mattered: a banking brand generating 8,821 voluntary community reactions during a live esports broadcast is not a media outcome. It's a community relationship.
150
Discord servers registered
2.500
In-game reward codes distributed
8,821
Community reactions
250
Unique active participants
200
Bot messages sent
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
The Dream Bot worked because it answered a question most sponsorship activations never ask: what is the audience already doing at the moment we appear, and how does our presence serve that rather than interrupt it?
For Santander, the answer was: watching for Baron. Waiting for the game-changing moment. Already emotionally activated by the competition. The bot used that state rather than competing with it.
That's a consumer behaviour insight before it's a technical one. And it required operational coordination precise enough to make real-time infrastructure the delivery mechanism for a brand's community strategy.
If your sponsorships are generating visibility without generating interaction — or if your brand's presence in a community feels like occupation rather than participation — that's a diagnosable problem.
Let's find out what's actually preventing engagement.
The Beliefs That Built This Business
Belief 1
Conversion problems are psychological problems wearing a technical disguise.
Brands spend thousands optimizing button colors and testing headlines while the real cause of death — invisible cognitive friction, trust collapse, loss aversion triggers — goes completely unexamined...
Belief 2
Most marketing research tells you what customers say. Consumer neuroscience tells you what they do.
There's a gap between what people report in surveys and what they actually do...
Belief 3
Operational experience is not optional for a marketing consultant.
You cannot diagnose a campaign you've never had to deliver...
Belief 4
Honest findings are more valuable than comfortable ones.
I will tell you what's actually killing your conversions — not what's easiest to hear...
PRIOR INVESTIGATIONS — FIELD RECORD
The Work Before The Consumer Autopsy
Before building a forensic investigation consultancy, there were 16 years of campaigns, projects, and client relationships. Here's what that actually looked like.
€2.6M
Earned media value
KitKat LFL Esports
84M+
Total impressions
Single campaign
275%
ROI
SEAT x MAD Lions
84K
Unique Twitch viewers
Kia x LoL Series
The Evidence
PUMA · LG · KITKAT · MAGNUM · SANTANDER · KIA · FOOT LOCKER · SEAT · GARNIER · GEN.G · NORAUTO · MOUV' · DEL ARTE ·
Both projects explore the same core question from different angles: how do different brains process information, make decisions, and find meaning?
The Other Investigation
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In 10 Months:
1.32M
Pinterest impressions
50%
newsletter open rates (industry average: 21%)
250+
Email Subscribers
100%
Steady passive revenue through digital products
THE DETECTIVE BEHIND THE AUTOPSY
THE PROBLEM I KEPT SEEING
For almost four years, I managed the execution of marketing campaigns for brands like PUMA, LG, KitKat, Seat and Magnum as a Senior Project Manager at an international esports and gaming consulting agency. Timelines, budgets, influencer activations, social campaigns, film productions - I coordinated it all.
And I had a front-row seat to something nobody talked about: campaigns that were perfectly executed, delivered on time, within budget... and still didn't convert the way they should. The creative was strong. The targeting was right. The execution was flawless. But somewhere between the first touchpoint and the final conversion, customers disappeared.
THE QUESTION NOBODY WAS ASKING
I worked across esports, gaming, healthcare, finance and tech over 16+ years in customer experience and project management. Different industries, different brands, different budgets. Same pattern. Same cause of death. And in almost every post-mortem, the conversation went the same way: "Let's test a new headline". "Maybe the claim is wrong". "We need more traffic".
Nobody was asking the right question: why are customers behaving this way?
CASE FILE: N. Remis
10+
Global
Brands
Across
Europe
&
APAC
3
Languages: French, Spanish & English
16+ Years in
Customer
Experience
What to Expect
Three honest statements about how I work — no platitudes, no agency language, no promises I can't keep.
01
I will tell you what I find — not what you want to hear.
If your campaign is failing because of a fundamental positioning
problem, I'll say so. If the issue is a single friction point
fixable in 48 hours, I'll say that too.
The investigation determines the answer — not the budget, not
what's easiest to implement, not what protects anyone's ego.
You're paying for a forensic diagnosis, not reassurance.
02
I work remotely, globally, and asynchronously.
Based in Gijón, Spain. Fluent in Spanish, French, and English.
Eight years managing remote projects across Europe, APAC, and
the Americas taught me how to communicate clearly across time
zones, cultures, and languages without losing precision.
Remote work isn't a limitation. It's how I've delivered €2.6M
earned media campaigns and coordinated teams across six continents.
03
I'm building this in public.
The Consumer Autopsy is new. I'm not going to pretend otherwise
or hide behind corporate language that obscures the timeline.
What I bring: 16 years of real operational experience, rigorous
training in consumer psychology, and a genuine obsession with
understanding why customers behave the way they do.
If that's what your business needs — let's talk.
THE DETECTIVE BEHIND THE AUTOPSY
WHAT I ACTUALLY BELIEVE
I believe most marketing fails at the psychological level, not the executional one. Customers don't abandon carts because your checkout has too many steps. They abandon because something triggered loss aversion, created decision fatigue or broke the trust you spent weeks building. The friction is invisible which is why it's so dangerous.
And I believe the only way to fix it is to stop guessing and start investigating. Treat every conversion problem like a forensic case. Follow the evidence. Find the cause of death. Prescribe the exact fix.
WHY I WENT BACK TO STUDY
I spent years on the execution side wondering why no one was studying the psychology behind what I was seeing. So I did. Consumer Neuroscience & Neuromarketing at Copenhagen Business School. Market Research & Consumer Behavior at IE Business School. Google UX Design and Data Analytics certifications.
The more I studied, the more I recognized the patterns I'd been watching for years - finally explained by the science. The Consumer Autopsy is what happens when 8+ years of managing campaigns from the inside meets the psychology of why they live or die.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
When you work with me, you're not getting a theorist who's read the textbooks but never managed a real campaign. You're getting someone who has coordinated the timelines, chased the assets, sat in the client calls, watched the KPIs drop and then went back to study the psychological mechanisms behind all of it.
That combination - operational experience plus behavioral science - is exactly what forensic marketing investigation requires.
CASE FILE: N. Remis
10+
Global
Brands
Across
Europe
&
APAC
3
Languages: French, Spanish & English
16+ Years in
Customer
Experience
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