Recently, Sega of America Inc. has put out an advertisement looking for people with a background in social media to work for them to promote Sonic the Hedgehog games. This job would be full-time, and pay anywhere between $62,000 and $93,000 with no necessary degrees as qualifications, only a two to four year history in Influencer Relations or Community Management.
The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise is a few months away from its 30th anniversary and the franchise is still going strong with the release of Sonic Frontiers late last year, and the release of Sonic Origins Plus releasing for said anniversary. That being said, it is understandable that Sega wishes to bring in a newer generation of fans and it seems their solution to do this is to bring in social media influencers to reach out to a wider audience.
Sega has made many different ventures outside of gaming to promote the Sonic franchise in the past according to Gamerant. There have been multiple TV series, toys, movies, even becoming a Virtual Youtuber back in 2021 to capitalize on the success of Vtubers. Now it seems that their newest venture is to capitalize on social media as a whole instead of just individual sections of it.
The creators that will be hired by Sega will seemingly be in charge of advertisements of future events, whether that be through YouTube, Twitch, or other social media outlets. The goal is to market the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise as widely as possible to keep up with the rapidly expanding market that is social media. The influencers working at Sega will have the responsibility to not only promote Sonic themselves, but to cultivate a team of talented Sonic the Hedgehog players to reach as wide of an audience as possible, while also helping the marketing team improve their strategies on how to market the character moving forward. This seems to be a major step for Sega to modernize one of their most well-known franchises. With the additional support of influencers into their marketing strategies, this could be beneficial towards the franchise as they hope to continue growing the franchise even further.