Zoufflé eSports: Where Creativity Competes

This semester, I had the opportunity to intern with Zoufflé, a grassroots eSports organization dedicated to building inclusive, community-driven spaces for fighting game fans across the country. What started as a passion project for its founder, Samantha Santana (EA employee and FGC advocate), has quickly grown into a brand that stands for representation, access, and good competition — and I’ve been lucky to contribute to that growth.

As a fully remote intern, I wore a lot of hats. Some weeks were heavy on strategy and writing. Others, I was designing graphics, mapping out social media calendars, or helping live-host events. And while no two days looked exactly the same, everything I worked on helped sharpen my skills as both a communicator and a strategist.

Here’s a glimpse at what I’ve been up to:

• Monthly Newsletters: I helped write and format our official Zoufflé email newsletter, which recaps past events, promotes upcoming tournaments, and highlights community wins. It was a crash course in tone, structure, and balancing hype with clarity.
• Content Calendars & Social Posts: I built weekly and monthly calendars for our Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram accounts, coordinating with our Social Media Managers to make sure posts were timely, brand-aligned, and relevant to the FGC audience.
• Player Profiles: I interviewed and spotlighted players from across our tournaments — from rising Smash Bros. stars to local legends — turning their stories into bite-sized content for social and email.
• Event Commentary: As a longtime Super Smash Bros. fan, I even got to jump on the mic and help commentate live brackets. It pushed me out of my comfort zone but gave me real insight into the rhythm and pacing of live events.
• Survey Writing & Research: I designed and distributed feedback surveys to our tournament entrants to learn what they valued in a grassroots event experience. From that, I built internal reports and used Temple University’s databases to compare Zoufflé’s brand with other community-first orgs across the U.S.
• Consumer Profiles: I translated that research into clear consumer personas to help the team understand who we’re reaching — and who we could reach next — based on lifestyle, game preferences, and motivators.
• Graphic Design: I used Canva to create flyers, stream overlays, and promotional visuals that matched our tone: fun, bold, and unapologetically grassroots.

From content creation to strategy to live event work, my internship at Zoufflé gave me a hands-on look at what it takes to build a gaming brand from the ground up — and more importantly, one that’s mission-led. Zoufflé’s work with partners like the*gameHERs and LatinX in Gaming has shown me how much good a brand can do when it centers community first.

As someone pursuing a career in brand strategy and marketing, this experience reminded me that great ideas don’t only come from big studios. Sometimes, the most innovative, creative, and meaningful work is happening in community discords, at grassroots tournaments, and on the mic between bracket matches.

And that’s exactly where I want to be.