Brush Up Your Game Skills

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Brushing your teeth isn’t exactly what you’d consider a fun activity, although it is a necessary one when it comes to keeping them healthy. However, a new company called Threadbare Games is looking to pick things up with the daily activity with a new game.

The title is called Grush, and it’s a mini-game that encourages kids to brush their teeth with a toothbrush that actually sends data to your mobile phone as part of a tie-in with a dental hygiene-based game. Using the Grush Brush, players would be able to receive information on their brush, and save and store it to see how they’re progressing.

The campaign has currently reached over $10,000 in its campaign, with the overall goal of $50,000 to get it made. Interested parties can check it out here {link no longer active}, and view the commercial below.

 

The NFLPI Tackles Mobile Video Games

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NFL Players Inc. (NFLPI), the marketing arm of the NFLPA, is serious about video games. Once just an afterthought to the business world, or at least second fiddle to the NFL when it comes to the lucrative Madden deal with Electronic Arts; the NFL players are more vocal about gaming this year. Representatives from the NFLPI made the trek to San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference to announce a new contest that will reward the winning mobile game with a free NFLPI license and $10,000 in social media marketing and player endorsement. The NFLPI Mobile Madness Challenge runs through April 20 and is open to anyone from garage developers to large publishers.

“As we grow our licensing business we’re looking to affiliate ourselves and align ourselves with great mobile game developers,” said Ricky Medina, Senior Manager of Business Development at NFL Players Inc. “Clearly our business has done very well on console and working alongside of the Madden product for a number of years, but we’re looking to expand our business into the mobile gaming space.”

By opening its license to anyone, this sets up the perfect wild card scenario, giving a small developer the opportunity to go up against giants like EA in the competitive mobile gaming space. Three finalists will be chosen to pitch their concept to NFLPI’s executive team in the Big Apple. The winner will be granted a license issued by NFLPI for the 2014-15 NFL season, which would include various rights to NFLPI trademarks, as well as names, likenesses, uniform numbers, photographs, voices, replica signatures, and biographical information of active players. All the stuff EA paid huge licensing fees for as part of the Madden franchise.

NFLPI also will award $10,000 in credit toward marketing the game via Activate, the group’s social media endorsement platform that allows active NFL players to promote the licensed product directly to their followers. Given the Twitter followings of star players and the power of social media, this will make it easier for the new game to score with NFL fans. So just what kind of games are NFL players looking for

“I would like to see any games that can use NFL players in the most creative way and not necessarily have the game be about football,” said Shane Vereen, running back for the New England Patriots. “I’m interested in seeing football players in games that have nothing to do with football, to see how creative things can get.”

Other leagues like the NBA have been creative in the mobile space, releasing games like NBA Rush that pits NBA players against invading aliens in an “endless runner” format. And everyone remembers console classics like NFL Blitz, which added an arcade slant to the football format.

“Our fans have been playing Madden for a number of years and this is going to give them a little bit of a change of pace,”said Medina. “It’s going to give them a different way to connect with NFL players. When we think as fans and players interact through their social media platforms, there is an affinity for these folks to be playing different variations of games that might not be football-centered, but still allows you to align yourself with your favorite players.”

The field is wide open for new ideas. In fact, it’s likely those developers who think outside the gridiron that will have the best chance of impressing the committee. Competition entries will be judged on entertainment value, visual design, technology, controls, originality, and ability to effectively market the game, among other factors. Participants can download the submission form at nflplayers.com/thechallenge and all materials should be e-mailed to thechallenge@nflplayers.com.

“The Mobile Madness Challenge as a way to incentivize and create some friendly competition within the game developers’ community to really bring great ideas of NFL players within mobile gaming environments with an untraditional type of fit,” said Medina.

Vereen, who serves as an NFLPI brand ambassador, is — like most NFL players these days — a big gamer. “I grew up playing games and never stopped,” said Vereen. “I would say that my top three games right now are Call of Duty, FIFA and Madden. I play them probably every day. I try to get better and have fun with it.”

Shane Vereen

Vereen made his first visit to GDC and participated in a panel at Moscone Center that announced the contest to attending developers. “GDC is awesome,” said Vereen. “Being a gamer myself, I’ve really felt at home at this event. It’s really cool to see the behind-the-scenes of how games are made, the production side of it and how games are sold.”

One of the big trends at GDC 2014 was virtual reality — something that’s taken on a life of its own after Facebook forked over $2 billion for Oculus VR. Companies like Sulon Technology, Seebright and Oculus VR are developing VR for mobile devices. “I think VR is awesome,” said Vereen, who was able to get hands-on with the technology. “I loved it. I hope it catches on because there’s literally nothing like it. I’ve never tried anything quite like that.”

Virtual reality opens up new opportunities for mobile games, including football. “I think it could make football games much more realistic than ever before,” said Vereen. “You’re not going to feel the hit, thank God, but you will be able to see things from a player’s perspective, what we see.”

Madden NFL 25, which is available across mobile devices, opens up football to fans on the go. Vereen said it’s cool to see himself in the Madden games. “It’s interesting, but I just take it with a grain of salt and just play the game to hopefully win.”

Speaking of winning, Vereen offers some advice for those who pick his Patriots on the virtual gridiron. “Give me the ball as much as possible if you want to win,” said Vereen, laughing. “No, I’m kidding, but honestly spread the ball around, use our weapons. New England has a lot of weapons, so use them wisely.”

Vereen is already looking forward to the new Madden game, especially when it comes to the in-game player ratings. “Before the season (last year) I wasn’t too happy, but by the end of the season I was much more pleased with my ratings,” said Vereen. “Throughout the season I was able to get them up. Hopefully, next year I’ll be able to do the same.”

Given the speed at which mobile games can be made, the new NFLPI game will be available for fans to play during the upcoming season of football — giving Madden some virtual competition. And this first attempt at new games could be just the beginning for the biggest names in the NFL to control their own video game destiny.

Mobile Is Not Coming — It’s Already Here!

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Jon Steinberg, President, BuzzFeed, recently said: ”Mobile-first is not enough. Mobile should be all you care about!”

Really

As I’m getting up to speed here at the Ayzenberg Group (we’re a full service ad agency), I’m pulling all the latest data from our [a]list in-house publishing platform (website, email newsletter and social channels).

Today between 20 and 30 percent of our readers are using mobile or tablet devices to access the [a]list newsletter and website on any given day and 70-80 percent are still accessing our website and newsletter using desktop computers.

So that means that our readership is still heavily desktop-based and that’s where we should spend our technical and design resources

Not really.

First of all, our [a]list mobile traffic is growing the fastest (up 55 percent as compared to 42 percent for overall traffic). Secondly, I have a feeling that it would be growing even faster if we did a better job of publishing specifically with a mobile-first strategy. Last, I think we are missing a lot of traffic from people who would like to consume our media content when they have the time, rather than just when they happen to be in front of a computer screen.

But what if we add a lot more heavy video content over the coming months? Turns out, in spite of mobile data caps on many cellular plans, the average American is also streaming more and more video to their mobile phones and tablets every day.

Video platform Ooyala’s data shows {link no longer active} consumers are adopting mobile online video even faster than previous forecasts, driven, in part, by live events like the Winter Olympics in Sochi and March Madness, which both showed huge gains in mobile share. Add to that the upcoming Soccer World Cup in Brazil this summer and it’s pretty clear that 2014 is poised to be a record year for streaming.

Ooyala believes the time viewers spend watching video on mobile devices will double by the end of 2015 to 37% 2016. Another recent forecast from ABI Research show that mobile video viewing will increase more than 65 percent by 2019, with consumers watching online video 21 hours a month, up from 12.7 hours per month in 2013.

So, while people might say that “mobile-first” is just the catchphrase du jour in the publishing industry, the data doesn’t lie. As Wayne Gretzky famously said: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

Now, here comes the real problem with any mobile-first publishing strategy: What will happen to ad revenue It’s the old analog dollars versus digital pennies debate all over again.

The fact of the matter is that either publishers nor advertisers have kept up with the growth in mobile. Pre-rolls, pop-ups and tiny little banners at the bottom or top of the screen, is this the best we can do as an industry No, Facebook and Twitter have shown us that we have an alternative that is really working and it’s called native.

But we have to scale this up and make it the center of our universe. Publishers and advertisers need to realize that they are in the same boat and we need to work together or the user will pay the price in terms of bad mobile experiences and turn to other platforms that get this right.

Barry Lowenthal, President, The Media Kitchen, put it well in a recent column:

“I love this business, and I believe that some of the smartest and most innovative people work in this business. But I’m a little worried that we’re not moving fast enough to create meaningful mobile advertising experiences and we’re not trying to solve the attribution and measurement challenges fast enough.”

 

Image Source: Sports Illustrated

On Leaving Facebook

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Last week, another notable brand aside from GM very publically pulled advertising dollars out of Facebook. The folks at Eat24 concocted a saucy “Dear John” letter that had social media workers everywhere nodding in agreement. Would this be the the beginning of the first wave Facebook expats to break through the cruel nature of EdgeRank’s hedges

Eat24’s letter resonated so much because they made a few points that made a whole lot of sense. After all the emphasis on gathering page likes and then the time, money and wit spent on creating engaging content to reach them, those hard-earned likes are now virtually useless.

In a world where operating on most social sites is basically free, aside from time and know-how, it is getting increasingly difficult to justify paying for a social network that teens, the bona fide arbiters of tech taste, are leaving. Moreover, Facebook’s constant war waged with fake likes has not yet been won. How disappointing to discover that those virtual votes of confidence are actually very low quality! Click farms continue to pop up around the world— it’s a big business.

After all, there’s still Twitter, a place where finding quality follows and engaging with your community is done with relative ease. That’s exactly where Eat24 saw their engagement go when they decided it was time to shutter their Facebook page, a move that made perfect sense since Twitter was already a better performing platform for them.

Social analysts at Ayzenberg were interested to know what would happen to Eat24 after they made the big jump away from Facebook. From the major surge of buzz generated by leaving Facebook, it makes sense that there would be a huge spike in mentions. The conversation for Eat24 quickly dissipated on Facebook, effectively abandoning what ostensibly was a major investment in the creation and maintenance of such a page.

It appears this breakup might be short-lived after all. When reached for comment, Eat24 replied with something interesting.

“We will be meeting with Facebook sometime this week and, out of respect for our relationship, we have no comment at this time.”

Does this mean that Eat24 and Facebook are back on How could Eat24 take Facebook back after putting such major stress on the demands of their relationship

Why all this attention paid to Facebook anyway, when brands are (or should be!) rolling out social strategies that make use of so many platforms Only because Facebook is still the largest social network in the world.

Executive Director of [ion] and [a]list daily contributor, Robert Brill makes a case for continuing to work with Facebook despite the struggle. Is the anger about Facebook’s bait and switch drowning out the fact that Facebook is still a viable platform

“Advertising has existed on Facebook, but the problem for brands is that what was once ‘free’ now doesn’t exist. Social amplification on Facebook was free because the site’s algorithm simply promoted the brand’s content to the end user.  However, there was still cost to build that fan-base and fund the cultivation of those brand-to-consumer relationships,” said Brill. “Teams were paid to create content for Facebook, other teams were paid to respond to interactions on Facebook, and yet other teams of strategists were paid to create the overall tone and direction of that content.  So, the reach was free, but a business model was born out of maximizing the EdgeRank algorithm.”

That model now needs to be arranged to consider the rising costs to administer content to Facebook users. The mantle must now be moved from building fanbases at Facebook’s urging to ensuring it shows up in their newsfeeds.

When it comes to the ultimate decision of whether or not brands should consider leaving the social site, Brill is skeptical.

“I don’t think brands should simply forgo all that hard work and massive intellectual property that is their Facebook presence because amplification is no longer free. Continue to advertise to Facebook users. Give them the same great content you’ve been giving them before.”

Coke And Pepsi Square Off In World Cup Ads

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The two biggest brands in soda are launching their own ads to celebrate the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. While Coca-Cola is using the ad to push soccer as a unifying force for good, Pepsi’s ad is more lighthearted and focuses on YouTube musician Stony encountering various famous soccer players from around the world on the streets of Brazil.

Source: AdWeek.com