The new Medal of Honor will give a completely different spin on the franchise. In this trailer, we get to hear about the personal connection back home one soldier has. EA is gunning for Activision and Call of Duty in the shooter genre, and creating buzz by being respectful of today’s soldiers seems like a good idea.
Many old hands in the media business are wondering if the recent rise of social media is just a fad, but according to the book Socialnomics (with statistics from the book shown in the below video) social media is, in fact, a transformational source for business and other parts of life. These are some pretty incredible data points, revealing the huge impact of social media. Marketers take note.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng%26amp
With the advent of YouTube, it can be hard to tell what’s company sponsored and what’s not. Take this video for instance: is it a viral marketing effort by Microsoft or was it just set up by a prankster Are parts of it staged You be the judge.
J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg have been rumored to be working on a project together for a while now, and some details have finally emerged. Called Super 8, it is penned in for a Summer 2011 release through Paramount, with both Spielberg and Abrams producing along with Bad Robot partner Bryan Burk for something estimated in the $45 – $50 million range.
In a smart marketing move to tap into the young male demo, a trailer for the project will be attached to Iron Man 2, debuting this weekend. The 90-second spot is described as masterfully creepy and is not shot in a hand-held Cloverfield fashion though it apparently focuses on some kids filming something sinister with a Super 8 camera. Any other plot details are being kept under wraps, as the production team is letting the trailer speak for itself.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Many futurists consider augmented reality (AR) to be a technology that will be highly prevalent in the near future, where displays will project images using special glasses or some other device to see images enhanced or changed depending on context, much like how visual prompts appear in many modern video games. While the technology for AR hasn’t been realized in a way that is cheap and easy to use, it could be a killer app when it does release.
As an emerging platform, augmented reality doesn’t depend on mobile, kiosks, window displays, or breakthrough baseball cards — however magical and engaging these deployments may be. It depends on the technology being all those things referenced a few lines up. AR apps of course have to be unbreakable; but what they really have to be is unforgettable. And technology is fundamental to attaining that precious intangible, writes Bruno Uzzan. AR needs to be viewed in that context, a technology platform that is more than versatile enough to flourish beyond digital marketing. Certainly, enabling web-based AR quickly opened up an enormous array of digital marketing applications. Digital marketing is still the very visible tip of the iceberg, but below the water line, there’s a vast array of applications — many of them transformative — that are poised for development, even as marketing applications mature.
AR has heavy potential for e-commerce, education, medicine, consumer products, public safety and more. With such a multifaceted technology, it’s important to understand all the technologies defining themselves as AR and what they are capable of.
AR is a trend, not a gimmick, asserts Uzzan. It’s a new paradigm that encompasses anything digital or virtual that ‘crosses over’ into your real environment. We all need to catch up to the technology – it’s evolving so quickly that it’s been difficult to process and even more challenging to assimilate. We’re stepping into a new world, where a variation of Moore’s Law applies: capabilities and application knowledge are growing almost exponentially. The skillset is expanding accordingly, and AR will be even more pervasive a year from now. Markerless tracking – which relies on natural targets to trigger the AR experience – figures to be a key element. Ditto for face-tracking, hand-tracking, other gestural techniques – even RFID.
AR has slowly gone from technical demonstrations to serious applications and it should bleed over more in the coming years. The progression from entertainment to real utility, from custom installations to commoditized products, is now under way. Watch as it continues to unfold. It should be quite a ride. For real, concludes Uzzan.
Source: MediaPost
Battle.net is one of the oldest online gaming portals, and historically all the games on the service have offered anonymity for its players. That’s about to change, as Blizzard announced that Battle.net will be integrated with the social network Facebook, starting with StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty.
“We’re pleased to be working with Facebook to integrate their platform with Battle.net to enhance the social-entertainment experience for our players,” said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. “This new functionality will make it easier than ever to connect with friends on Battle.net and play StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games together.”
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty players will be able to add their Facebook friends to their Battle.net friend lists. Functionality is currently being tested in the StarCraft II beta, and more Facebook-related features for Battle.net will be announced at a later date. This seems like a great move by Blizzard. Leveraging Facebook is smart marketing and gamers should appreciate the added features from the integration.
ijji.com announced recently that it signed a new partnership with SupersonicAds. This will give international gamers the chance to earn in-game currency using targeted advertising and offers.
“ijji.com is making life a little sweeter for its European members with SupersonicAds’ support,” said Sirgoo Lee, CEO, NHN USA, Inc., which hosts ijji.com. “As we continue to build our European presence, providing third-party content that resonates with them is a must. We recognize that some advertised offers are not available, or simply don’t translate across continents, and the new partnership remedies that.”
SupersonicAds specializes in providing virtual currency payouts and conversion rates in Europe. “We are excited to team up with such a respected online gaming community like ijji.com,” said Gil Shoham, CEO, SupersonicAds. “ijji.com draws a staggering community count of more than 10 million gamers, and we are honored to play a role in the portal’s European expansion.”
These sorts of paid sponsorships are becoming common in social games, so we’d expect to see more of these opportunities from game portals and online games.
Irbtrax released the results of a study comparing the social media strategies of Facebook and Twitter. Specifically, the social media services were compared for their effectiveness in business-to-business and business-to-consumer Social Media marketing strategies.
Business-to-business actually fared better on Twitter because of its expediency and viral capabilities. Viral Marketing is a key business to business social media application for rapid and wide Internet exposure, says the report. The 140 character Twitter Re-Tweets (RT s) that include links to popular or relevant business content can increase branding, drive website traffic and multiply rapidly outside of the Twitter network. This is largely contributory to Google s real time Search Engine Results Pages (SERP s) that often stream live Twitter feeds for popular search phrases. Additionally, content rich Tweets can find their way onto third party Twitter news resources as well as in Blogs and other platforms that feature the news or subject involved. The study also concluded that it’s not even necessary to have a large group of followers to benefit from Twitter’s viral marketing advantages for reasons outlined above.
Facebook functioned better for companies that have high brand recognition. Relevant and content rich Facebook updates added by these well known companies were often shared by their followers creating an internal viral marketing atmosphere, the report said. Additionally, Facebook also performed better in the B2B industry for companies who s products or services require the use of videos or advanced image sharing devices for marketing purposes. However, this also represents a smaller niche.
In the business to customer category Twitter performed well when real time applications were important. Mobile real time applications involve announcements that are created with a wireless Internet connected device and distributed ‘outside the office.’ They include extremely time sensitive information intended for your target audience, detailed the report. Announcements of a spontaneous nature involving special offers, breaking news or notification of sudden public appearances. This represents a small but growing niche of companies that are very mobile in nature and engage in continuous travel.
By comparison, Facebook excelled in nearly all other business to consumer categories. A format that allows for the inclusion of photos, multiple outbound links, videos, surveys, promotions, direct engagement and other business to consumer applications, notes the report. Facebook also facilitates the building of a large network of followers in the shortest amount of time to help market a consumer product or service. Facebook also is a much more interactive community which is important to consumers. It allows for direct feedback and image building. The addition of the Facebook ‘Like’ button has shown to be popular and effective Business to Consumer marketing feature and a valuable market research application.
The larger study indicates that in order to maximize your Social Media Internet marketing results it’s best to create a presence on both. However, if trying to decide which one to engage first or where to spend the most amount of your available time- It’s important to perform basic Internet Market research, apply the findings to your target audience and weigh the benefits of each platform. This study also concluded that SEO combined with Social Media Marketing will yield greater potential results, concluded the synopsis.
Source: Irbtrax
The Assassin’s Creed series is filled with secret messages, conspiracy theories and subterfuge. Appropriately, Ubisoft is teasing details of the next title in the Assassin’s Creed series on the official Facebook page via antagonist Dr. Vidic.
It is the time of our rising. A new age enters and a great battle looms. Templar destiny is at hand and waiting for you, reads the first message by Vidic, followed by, An offering to you who welcome a new dawn of man.Take this image and answer our call. A great battle looms to finish the past and begin the future. Stand ready to serve. We will send for you soon.
All of the messages will likely lead to the official revelation of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, which was uncovered yesterday in a GameStop ad.
Tableau Software announced today that they will provide Zynga with rapid data visualization and real-time interactive data analysis. This will help the social gaming company better analyze the data generated by their millions of active users in order better serve their customers and connect with ther marketing partners.
“With the amount of data Zynga captures daily, our rapid-fire business intelligence and business analytics capabilities match Zynga’s analytical prowess uniquely,” said Tableau’s CEO and co-founder Christian Chabot. “With Tableau, Zynga can unearth vast amounts of user data in real-time, which will enable them to quickly make product decisions focused on creating the best social gaming experience.”
“Analytics are core to our business — Zynga’s 235 million active users produce a huge volume of data which our analysts use to improve the game experience for our users,” said Ken Rudin, General Manager of Analytics for Zynga. “We need a business intelligence solution that will enable any of our employees to quickly analyze and understand how our user and game data can be leveraged to help us create the most compelling social games. Tableau Software was the ideal choice for a number of reasons; it’s powerful, highly interactive, easy to integrate into our existing infrastructure and makes it much easier to identify actionable insights and share them throughout the company.”
