Amazon Ads’ Twitch Brand Partnership Studio has tapped into the power of gaming this Movember, using Twitch to get young Australian men talking about mental health and the support available to them.
In partnership with Movember, Minds Support Network and GamerCounsel, Amazon Ads’ creative team has launched ‘Squad Support’, a free initiative bringing together gaming and mental health support.
The thinking behind the pro-bono initiative is young men often find it easier to connect through shared activities than traditional conversations about mental health. Research shows nearly half (47 per cent) of Australian male gamers aged 18-34 have made friends through video games.
Meanwhile, Mission Australia’s 2025 Youth Survey found more than one third (38.1 per cent) of young respondents experience loneliness at least some of the time.
For Amazon Ads ANZ managing director Willie Pang, the opportunity is about using the Twitch platform and gaming community to drive meaningful behaviour change.
Speaking to B&T, Pang said Amazon has a “much broader opportunity to drive behaviour change, to shift into community conversations”.
A big part of that opportunity lies in Twitch, which offers a direct line to the target audience.
“Twitch is an incredibly powerful place to speak to young males who are notoriously hard to reach. The world generally suffers from it, but young males particularly, suffer from short attention spans. Twitch is one of those places that that’s just not true,” Pang said.
On average, Twitch users spend more than three-and-a-half hours on the platform each day, while 75 per cent of its millions of users fall within the 18-34 age bracket.
With such a large and engaged audience, Twitch presents a unique opportunity to reach young men in “a moment in time where they’re doing something that they love” and already spend much of their time. That’s where the brand ambassadors come in, using the power of gaming and familiar faces to make conversations around men’s mental health more accessible.
Four Australian Twitch creators, Bajo, Crayator, Jack Buzza and Midbeast, introduce the program to their communities through livestreams and across their social ecosystem, encouraging conversations about men’s mental health.
“We are trying to shift community sentiment. We’re trying to turn it into a force for good to drive behaviour change. And the creators that we’ve recruited have very large social followings of their own,” added Pang.
“Their role is broadcasting through their own Twitch live stream, but they will also have snippets of the campaign that they deliver into their YouTube channels and their Instagram channels.”
The campaign’s creator livestreams began in October with Bajo, Crayator and Jack Buzza, with the final session taking place tonight (Monday, 9 November, 6pm-8pm AEDT) with Midbeast, showcasing Squad Support through League of Legends.
The campaign also introduces “U GUD?”, a positive reinterpretation of gaming’s familiar “Git Gud” phrase, encouraging players to check in on one another and reclaiming the ‘Git Gud’ put-down as a message of care. The message will be amplified on Twitch across each creator’s social ecosystem, encouraging young men to check on their mates as part of everyday gaming culture.
“When people ask a mate or they’re asking the community what they should do to get better at a game. The general consensus statement there is: ‘Hey, just get good’, pronounced Git Gud. What we’ve done is we’ve gone, let’s reframe that as a collective. Let’s create a movement around this statement of asking the question, ‘You good?’ as a way to then drive people to Squad Support,” said Pang.
Beyond the livestreams, the campaign will extend across Twitch through a custom “U GUD?” channel emote, allowing viewers to show their support in chat, alongside interactive polls and Twitch’s Stream Together feature, which enables creators to host Movember experts during livestreams. A charity fundraising tool will also encourage viewers to support Movember, while social content from each creator will help embed “U GUD?” into everyday gaming conversations.
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The initiative gives participants an opportunity to connect with others while accessing support from trained professionals, without having to navigate a traditional counselling setting.
Throughout November, participants can sign up to free sessions at squadsupport.gg, with 500 participant hours of support allocated to the initiative, including dedicated time for triage and safeguarding capacity.
Participants will get matched with a trained counsellor or support practitioner, and can choose to play one-on-one or with two others in a group. They connect through Discord, an online platform that allows people to communicate via voice, video and text while gaming, for a private session where they can share experiences, access support, or simply enjoy playing together.
While Squad Support is launched in collaboration with Movember to shine a light on young men’s mental health, the sessions with a qualified therapist are open to anyone in the gaming community who would benefit from support.
Squad Support aims to encourage young men to build meaningful connections and feel more comfortable accessing mental health support through shared interests and activities. Beyond November and the free sessions, gamers will be able to use Minds Support Network’s normal services.
Squad Support sessions will be available free of charge throughout November, subject to availability. Places are limited, and registration does not guarantee participation. To learn more or express interest in participating, visit the Squad Support website.
At the end of our conversation, Pang said: “Because of the age demo in our industry, and just how pervasive gaming is more broadly, this is an invitation for the readership of B&T also to log in, have a look and consider mental health support services.”
Squad Support is not a crisis service. Anyone requiring immediate assistance should call 000 or contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.
