While some might say that DC Comics has no counter to Marvel’s Iron Man 2 movie this summer, it’s not so! Coming from a somewhat obscure background as time-traveling cowboy, say hello to Jonah Hex! Although this movie looks quite cool, we doubt this has anywhere close to the marketing potential of Iron Man; then again, it does have the unbelievably sexy Megan Fox firing guns in it…
{video link no longer active}
The Daily Show’s structure is a cocktail of news and comedy, using a format similar to late-night comedy to give a funny spin on recent events. While the show is often political and referential to the media, Jon Stewart and company have turned their gaze towards Apple and the case of the missing iPhone prototype. As we said recently, and as Stewart’s clip below emphasizes, Apple’s handling of this situation seems to be generating bad publicity for the company.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c |
| Appholes | |
Isaac Clark escaped from the nightmare of the USG Ishimura only to find a greater nightmare on a space station known as the Sprawl in Dead Space 2. EA is finally starting to get some buzz going for the title. Check out the first video look below.
{video link no longer active}
Conan O’Brien’s first TV interview on 60 minutes won’t be shown until this Sunday, but CBS has already released an excerpt. In the clip O’Brien indicates he would not have done to Jay Leno what Leno did to him.
“He went and took that show back, and I think in a similar situation, if roles had been reversed, I know — I know me, I wouldn’t have done that. If I had surrendered ‘The Tonight Show’ and handed it over to somebody publicly and wished them well — and then six months later. But that’s me, you know. Everyone’s got their own, you know, way of doing things,” said O Brien, who when asked what he would have done, responded, “Done something else, go someplace else. I mean, that’s just me.”
After the situation became clear, O’Brien didn’t think that staying at NBC would bear fruit. “I think this relationship is going be toxic and maybe we just need to go our separate ways,” he added. “That’s really how it felt to me. And I started to feel that I’m not sure these people even really want me here. I can’t do it [anymore].”
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
As tends to happen in history, old ways are forgotten when they’re totally outmoded; thus, the old system of buying ads on the Internet is remembered by few. Back in the mid-1990s, ads could be bought for any keyword that the advertisers wanted, whether they were relevant or not it was the Wild West back then for Internet ads and it was watering down the product.
Meanwhile, on the organic side, gaming the system became the norm. SEO was less about content and linking strategies, and more about meta tags and submission tools, writes Tom Hespos. “Search engines weren’t incentivized to spend money on maintaining the editorial integrity of the product, mostly because they were making money selling keyword-triggered banner campaigns for double-digit CPMs.”
In essence, this was resulting in both ads and search results that were irrelevant for what users were looking for. Google changed all this, because it made the searches relevant to users, and made them applicable to advertisers using the same model.
“Google’s economic interests are directly aligned with how relevant paid search results are to the end user,” notes Hespos. “So ads are subject to a Darwinian process wherein if they don’t generate revenue for Google, they either get canceled by Google or the advertiser ends up paying more on a per-click basis for fewer clicks. This lines up directly with how relevant end users think an ad is.”
While the model is no doubt better for all parties, it presents a problem for less experienced advertisers. Efficiency in choosing the right terms to search for can make a huge difference for a company.
“Trying to push irrelevant advertising on experienced search advertisers doesn’t make sense. If I were directing sales at Google, I’d place more importance on making sure that the top advertising spenders in the country were adequately educated about how search works, and less importance on getting experienced advertisers to spend more,” comments Hespos. “I’d also share the right methodology for testing, ensuring that advertisers fully understand what happens when they think their products are relevant to a term when they’re clearly not. I would also emphasize showing how search fits with the rest of the marketing mix. But I most certainly wouldn’t have my sales reps out of alignment with my business model. That’s for sure.”
Source: iMediaConnection
Halo: Reach is about to go into open beta and the hype has already begun (see yesterday’s teaser trailer). It seems Microsoft is going the route of unconventional physical promotions by sending out copies of Halo 3: ODST (required for the beta) with a pair of electric shearers.
Source: Joystiq
Social media is clearly going to be important for all marketers going forward, and Electronic Arts is excitedly embracing the trend. On Facebook, EA can brag that there are 500,000 following FIFA, 850,000 following EA Sports and five million that have become fans of BioWare.
“We see huge value in engaging directly with the fans of all our games,” said EA s U.K. PR director Simon Smith-Wright. “Many of our studios and games already boast enormous active communities but Facebook is also very valuable to us in growing these. And with social media experts Playfish now part of the EA team, you can imagine how we can really grow in this space.”
Tecmo Koei’s community manager Chin Soon Sun noted that Facebook adds a quick and easy way to boost existing campaigns. “It’s free, so we don t need to spend a huge amount of advertising cost,” said Sun. All we need is to be enthusiastic, interact with them, keep them updated and we get to know each other better.”
“However, with this direct sort of content, publishers need to be cautious to make sure they control their message. Facebook is a sure fire way of hyping the community and spreading information and assets such as trailers on new titles,” said Namco Bandai’s head of PR Lee Kirton. “But anything you release will spread to a much broader level, so communication is important. It all needs to fit into the overall campaign and not damage any of your global relationships.”
Source: MCV
One of the more infamous decisions that Apple has made of late is excluding Adobe Flash support from their iPhone and iPad, along with banning conversions of Flash-to-iPhone. Today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs posted an open letter detailing why his company does not allow Flash on his company’s portable devices, and he claims it is a decision based on technology, not on protecting the company’s App Store.
He notes that Adobe’s Flash is not an open system, unlike HTML 5 which is used by Apple, Google and others. Jobs also said that using the video format H.264, users are able to access most videos on the web. He also detailed that Flash has reliability and performance issues (citing it as the top reason Macs computers crash) and isn’t suited to battery operated devices.
“Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software,” wrote Jobs. “The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.”
The most important reason for the lack of Flash support, Jobs argues, stem from relying on cross-platform third-party software for development, because of quality issues. “Our motivation is simple we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen,” writes Jobs. “We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.”
“Flash was created during the PC era for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards all areas where Flash falls short. The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple s App Store proves that Flash isn t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games. New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind,” concluded Jobs.
Source: Apple.com
As expected, Avatar was at the top of the three major national video charts its first week in stores. The biggest box office hit of all time saw 6.7 million units of sales in its first four days in stores, with 2.7 million of them on Blu-ray Disc.
Nielsen VideoScan First Alert sales chart indicates that the second best selling DVD, Crazy Heart, only sold 5 percent as many copies as Avatar, while the DVD version of Crazy Heart only sold 1.7 percent as many Blu-ray Discs. Things were slightly more even on Home Media Magazine’s rental chart, with Crazy Heart finishing second again and recording 31 percent as much activity as Avatar.
The new iPhone 4G has already been accidentally revealed, but the official launch could be close anyway. Reports are that the next version of the iPhone will be unveiled at the Worldwide Developers Conference.
Apple has revealed both the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS during the past two years at the Worldwide Developers Conference. The product launch for those phones came weeks after the first announcement, but this year, the company is apparently planing to make the iPhone 4G available the day it is announced.
Circumstantial evidence supporting a launch during the Worldwide Developers Conference on June 7 is that AT&T employees have been barred from taking vacations during the month, which has only happened during new iPhone launches. The leak of the new iPhone prototype may have had the effect of pushing up Apple’s timetable as well.
Source: Mashable
