Global Gaming Industry Strategic Engagement and Market Intelligence Consultant, Office of Innovation, 4 months (virtual)

UNICEF is interested in innovative partnerships with industry partners that enhance brand mission reach and diversify financing flows for children and their communities. The global video game industry is one such dynamic and culturally influential example, engaging more than three billion people worldwide and generating nearly USD 200 billion annually. Gaming offers rich opportunities for public engagement, advocacy, education, and fundraising through its vast digital ecosystems, communities, and immersive storytelling platforms. However, these engagement opportunities remain relatively untapped by UNICEF, as we parallel aim to raise awareness and standards for child protection in the gaming ecosystem. There is a need for a cohesive strategic framework to guide UNICEF’s engagement with the video gaming industry, one that is informed by evidence, built on industry insight, and designed for operational exploration across geographical markets.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child...innovate

UNICEF has a 70-year history of innovating for children. We believe that new approaches, partnerships and technologies that support realizing children’s rights are critical to improving their lives.

The Office of Innovation is a creative, interactive, and agile team in UNICEF. We sit at a unique intersection, where an organization that works on huge global issues meets the start-up thinking, the technology, and the explorative curiosity that turn this energy into new ideas and scalable solutions.

UNICEF's Office of Innovation creates opportunities for the world's children by focusing on where new markets and industries can collectively come together to meet their vital needs. One way we do this is to co-design and explore new models of partnership that leverage core business values across the public and private sectors in order to deliver fast and lasting results for children and their communities.

Our team

We're an interdisciplinary team around the world tasked with identifying, prototyping, and scaling new technologies, practices and partnerships. With our partners, we focus on convening and collaborating on new and different solutions, low- and high-tech, by:

• Looking at the 2-5 year horizon to evaluate emerging and trending technologies and to see how UNICEF can work with the private sector on doing better business while improving essential services for children;
• Investing in early stage solutions that show great potential to positively impact children in the 02 year future including the Venture Fund that invests in open source technology solutions from start-ups based in emerging economies;
• Identifying proven solutions that can be implemented at national scale in multiple countries – taking the ideas that help thousands in one country, bringing them to dozens of countries across multiple sectors, and impacting the lives of millions of children.

How can you make a difference?

The purpose of this consultancy is to conduct targeted industry research into the video gaming sector and propose at least 4 high-potential products or engagement strategies that UNICEF can use to:

• Engage with gaming companies and platforms, as well as high net worth individuals from the industry
• Raise funds, including flexible (unrestricted)
• Increase global brand awareness, especially among Gen Z

Specific objectives include:

1. Map the gaming landscape to identify priority geographical markets, platforms, companies and individuals with the highest potential for UNICEF engagement.
2. Document best-in-class examples of social impact and charitable collaborations in the gaming industry, including:
   1. In-game fundraising activations and donation mechanics
   2. Esports and tournament partnerships
   3. Live-streaming and influencer fundraising
   4. Branded storytelling, advocacy and educational content
   5. Product licensing and merchandising tie-ins
   6. Jointly designed social impact initiatives
3. Conduct targeted interviews or virtual roundtables with key industry stakeholders (e.g., publishers, developers, platforms, esports organizations, streamers, and agencies) to understand motivations, partnership preferences, and barriers to collaboration.
4. Co-create four pilot concepts with indicative budgets, timelines, and expected outcomes for fundraising, advocacy, social impact programme reach, and brand engagement.

Your main responsibilities will be:

The selected consultant will be responsible for:

1. Strategic Intelligence and Market Mapping

• Conduct targeted analysis of high-value gaming segments (e.g., in-game monetization, esports competitions and teams, streaming, licensing).
• Identify and profile the top 20–25 companies or platforms or high net-worth individuals with strong potential alignment with UNICEF’s mission and objectives for each category.
• Provide insight into market trends, audience demographics, and monetization models relevant to social impact engagement.
  
  

2. Primary Insights from the Industry

• Conduct 8–10 in-depth interviews with senior representatives from the gaming industry.
• Capture key findings on corporate social responsibility (CSR), cause marketing, licensing and preferred partnership models.
• Summarize actionable insights for UNICEF on partnership design and positioning of compelling partnership offers.

 3. Benchmarking and Case Studies

• Produce a Best Practice Compendium of 10–15 concise, visual case studies highlighting successful gaming-for-social impact collaborations (across charities and major brands).
• Analyze partnership mechanics, revenue generation models, audience reach, social impact outcomes and lessons learned.
  
  

4. Pilot Concept Development

• Co-design 4 pilot concepts that illustrate how UNICEF could operationalize partnerships within different areas of the gaming ecosystem.
• Each concept should include:
  • Description of the activation or collaboration model
  • Potential partners and target audiences
  • Implementation steps and estimated timeline
  • Resource requirements and projected ROI (fundraising, awareness, advocacy, social impact)

5. Validation and Knowledge Sharing

• Facilitate a virtual validation workshop with relevant UNICEF stakeholders to test findings
• Facilitate an in-person and virtual design workshop to secure alignment on next steps.
• Deliver design workshop materials including slides, facilitation notes, and a short summary of feedback and agreed actions.

If you would like to know more about this consultancy, please access the full ToR here:  ToR for Global Gaming Consultant.pdf

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• A university degree (Batchelor’s or higher) in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics or other relevant field is mandatory. 
• A minimum of 10 years of relevant professional experience in industry research, especially in the video gaming, digital entertainment, or technology sectors. 
• Knowledge of gaming monetization and user engagement models. 
• Familiarity with corporate social responsibility (CSR), cause marketing, or nonprofit-business partnerships. 
• Strong analytical, writing, and presentation skills. 
• Experience working with or for UNICEF or mission-driven organizations is preferred. 
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

Travel:

• The consultant is expected to travel for a stay of four (4) nights in Stockholm or other European location determined by the contracting manager at least 2 times in the contract period.
• The consultant is responsible for arranging his/her own travel, including visa and travel insurance.

Payment details and further considerations

• Payment of professional fees will be based on the submission of agreed deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant. 

How to apply:

• Interest applicant is required to submit a financial proposal with all-inclusive fee.  Please see the financial proposal template.   Consultancy Financial Offer template.docx
• Financial proposal must include travel costs (economy class) and daily subsistence allowance, if travel is required as per TOR and any other estimated costs: visa, travel/health insurance
• Applications without a financial proposal will not be considered.

General Terms and Conditions:

Please review UNICEF's General Terms and Conditions for Consultants here for important information regarding contract obligations, including medical insurance, SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) vaccination, and income tax requirements.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS).

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children, and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks: 

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.

Additional information about working for UNICEF can be found here.