Smartphone Marketing — Not Just Tiny PCs

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Mobile marketing is expected to be the next big thing for most marketers, with 100 million smartphones in the U.S. expected to be active by by the end of 2011. It’s not just the power of these devices but the context that they deliver that’s important for marketers to consider.

Too many apps built today treat the smartphone as a little PC, writes Josh Bernoff. That’s the wrong way to think about it. Mobile experiences make up for their interface limitations with knowledge. When a phone knows where you are, what you’re doing, your identity and history, and even potentially your attitudes — based on what you’ve done in the past year and the past five minutes — it can help predict and deliver what you want right now. This is the context that makes mobile devices more intimate and completely different from traditional web experiences.

Elements like built in GPS, accelerometers and high-res displays will be standard in all phones pretty soon. Keeping this in mind, it will be important to deliver greater functionality, use data presented to you and use the technology to its greatest effect.

Where you are on this path depends on your company, said Bernoff. If you’re competing by differentiating, have retail locations, or work in mobile-forward industries like gaming and media, you must move aggressively to deliver these new levels of mobile experience — your customers will demand it, and your competitors are already working to deliver it. If you compete based on cost in a slower-moving industry like insurance or business services, start with stage 1 and know where you’re headed. Focus on your consumers’ pain points and behavior, not just on what information you can fling into a mobile app. But failing to get on this path — or failing to notice it at all — is a big mistakes right now. Mobile is the future of interactivity — you’d better prepare for the future of mobile.

Source: AdAge.com

Activision Bags New Modern Warfare 3 Partner

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Activision has announced that they have hired SapientNitro to work on creative for the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure. They’ve already begun work on the Modern Warfare 3 assets, the latest incarnation of the hit franchise expected to generate billions of dollars.

“We look forward to working with SapientNitro to create and implement leading edge online strategies to engage our audience in a deeper relationship with our top brands,” said Amy Stettler, VP Global Media, Digital & Consumer Engagement at Activision. “With SapientNitro, Activision will be able to continue to focus on creating the most engaging and entertaining gaming titles, raising the bar for the entire genre by delivering deep innovative and unique digital engagement experiences.”

“Activision’s gaming titles are known for pushing the envelope in terms of graphic sophistication, engaging plotlines, global gameplay, and cinematic intensity, and we look forward to working with them to extend these into engaging and immersive digital marketing experiences,” said Kevin MacLean, VP and general manager at SapientNitro. “We’re thrilled to be working with Activision to help create new campaigns, integrate current marketing platforms and initiatives, and work across titles to help them better engage with current users and convert casual users into core gamers.”

Electronic Arts Buys PopCap For Hundreds Of Millions

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Electronic Arts confirmed rumors that they have purchased PopCap. The total sum includes $650 million cash, $100 million in shares of EA common stock and $550 million in incentives tied to 2013 financial milestones.

EA and PopCap are a compelling combination, said EA CEO John Riccitiello. PopCap s great studio talent and powerful IP add to EA s momentum and accelerate our drive towards a $1 billion digital business. EA s global studio and publishing network will help PopCap rapidly expand their business to more digital devices, more countries, and more channels.

“We picked EA because they have recast their culture around making great digital games,” said David Roberts, CEO of PopCap. “By working with EA, we’ll scale our games and services to deliver more social, mobile, casual fun to an even bigger, global audience.

Free Games — New Promotion For PSN?

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Data suggests that ‘Welcome Back’ program for PSN was a success for Sony. However, EEDAR’s Jesse Divnich believes that it may have uncovered a new marketing system releasing for free for a limited time a prior incarnation of a franchise before the new game’s release.

“While the Welcome Back program was designed to rekindle the activity and consumer trust of PlayStation Network users, the data suggests it may have highlighted a new profitable sequence for video games,” said Divnich. “ESRB president Patricia Vance once discussed the lack of ‘release sequences’ in the video game industry compared to other forms of entertainment. For instance, a movie is first released in theaters where it generates the most revenue, then moves to the Pay-Per-View market, followed by the rental market and lastly, broadcast for free on network television. Within the video game industry, however, these sequences typically occur simultaneously with games being available physically, digitally and for rental concurrently and rarely made available for free.”

“The data [from the Welcome Back program] would indicate that the free sequence may be incredibly beneficial to the video game industry. For instance, LittleBigPlanet 2 experienced a 66 percent gain in IGN Page Views and a 23 percent increase in Unique Interest (an IGN viewer indicating interest or purchase in a title) in June compared to the month of May. A strong possible explanation for this would be that after consumers played LittleBigPlanet for free through the PlayStation Network, many actively looked for the sequel and in some cases purchased the game, he continued, “Using a separate metric, GameTrailers.com Media Views, LittleBigPlanet 2 trailer views increased 69 percent over the comparable time period, independently reinforcing IGN’s results.

Microsoft Game Studio Head Talks Master Chief As Focus Of Halo

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The first three Halo titles were all about Master Chief John-117 as the hero, but more recent titles like Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach went away from this focus. To Microsoft Game Studio president Phil Spencer, Halo is about Master Chief’s adventure.

What does that mean Playing Master Chief, said Spencer. We kind of lost our way a little bit, I ll say.  And that s why I wanted to make sure that at the unveiling of Halo 4, you knew you were playing Master Chief, that John was back. Because Master Chief is the John Wayne character of that universe, and that s who you want to play.

If you were a Halo fan for Halo 1, 2 and 3, Reach made sense to you, but fundamentally there are a ton of players on our box right now that didn t start with Halo 1, he added. I loved Reach as a game as a fan of the fiction, I totally love the story in Reach, Reach is one of the best stories in the Halo universe. But it made more sense to you if you were a Halo fan. If you were new to Xbox 360, 360 s where you started playing on Xbox, you understood what Halo 3 was. ODST and Reach, maybe you weren t as centered.

Source: OXM

Apple Targets RIM Business Users

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With RIM focused internally on trying to right its own ship, Apple is taking aim at their business user base. They recently took out a back cover ad for The Economist promoting iPhone business apps along with a website highlighting the iPhone business functions.

Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook has made no secret his company’s ambition for business usage, noting that iPhones are used by 88 percent of Fortune 500 companies, with 75 percent using iPads. In response to flagging results for RIM, most shareholders want an independent chair of the board.

It’s going to be feistier than normal because of where the stock is and everyone is pushing for them to split the CEO and chairman roles, Avian Securities analyst Matthew Thornton wrote in a research note.

RIM is expected to announce updated sales figures of their PlayBook tablet and could go a long way towards demonstrating the QNX OS on its traditional smartphones. What this company needs to do, as quickly as humanly possible but in a well-executed manner, is launch their next-gen operating system for smartphones, Daniel Ernst, an analyst at Hudson Square Research, said in another note to investors.

Source: Toronto Star

ModernWarfare3.com Has Battlefield 3 Redirect

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ModernWarfare3.com would seem like something that would naturally be in the hands of Activision. However, going to the website immediately forwards users to battlefield.com/battlefield3.

The domain of ModernWarfare3.com was apparently registered privately all the way back in 2009. The change to the domain was apparently made just a couple of days ago, indicating that EA may have acquired the site domain recently or that a Battlefield fan recently changed.

Source: CVG

Xbox 360 Titles Coming To PC: Report

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Reports are that Microsoft will launch Windows 8 with the ability to play Xbox 360 games on a PC. The Xbox 360 games on PC will apparently carry a subscription fee.

For online gaming, Windows Live Marketplace will be used and PC owners will not be able to play directly against Xbox 360 users. This will probably be used as a means to extend interest in certain software titles sometime after the next Xbox releases.

Microsoft recently announced plans to merge the Xbox.com and Games For Windows Marketplace.

Source: Insideris.com

Saints Row: The Third Ad Words Popping Up For Other Games

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THQ is targeting fans of some of the other biggest AAA titles of the year with Google Ad Words. The cheeky sponsored search items include Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Uncharted 3 and Arkham City.

“Forget [insert game title here],” states the ad, “Strap On Saints Row: The Third For The Most Over-The-Top Videogame.”

THQ has done this before, pushing Homefront in searches for Battlefield 3. They’re not the only company that has done this Activision and Electronic Arts each bought ad search terms for both Medal of Honor and Call of Duty and Killzone 3 videos were linked in YouTube for a variety of other shooter titles.

Source: CVG