Archive for the 'Advertising' Category

July 23-25 2008

It’s 3am in Seattle. I have just returned from a day and night out meeting the ’movers and shakers’ at Seattle’s Casual Connect Games Conference. Attended this year by over 3000 professionals, a whole lot of busy people from such companies as Sandlot games; Play First; Microsoft Casual Games; EA’s Pogo ; Iwin and Big Fish Games (to name a few companies) have converged on Benaroya Hall to discuss the future of casual gaming. And how does the future look? According to the Casual Games Association, the industry which was reported to have represented 2 billion dollars in revenue in 2007 looks not just bright, but optimistically stellar! In fact, projected earnings alone have been estimated this year to represent an overall increase of 20% from 2007!Furthermore, it was noted that innovations in platforms and gameplay including the hugely popular Nintendo WII, mobile, Nintendo DS as well as new experiences represented by games such as “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” have brought “casual” games to a whole new audience hungry for fun and engaging experiences! And that means of course that ‘casual’ games are becoming more and more ubiquitous with each passing year.

The Casual Connect Conference began with a good start expounding new ways of thinking in a field ready to pounce on innovative approaches. In this hodge-podge of emerging talent and business models, new deals that will revolution game play as we know it are as I’ve come to witness, already in the works!

We’re excited to announce our latest client project, which quietly launched today:

http://shiftcontrolmedia.com/

ShiftControl is a company that represents the best of the advertising, video gaming and the pop culture spaces, synthesized to create memorable and meaningful brand experiences for consumers. For the new website, mod7 turned their philosophy of “seek first to entertain” into a fun, immersive Flash experience.

The best part? It’s full of little pixel people with kooky attitude and story arcs worthy of Shakespeare (err… or maybe a slow Lost episode)…

Crowd-sourcing is being utilized again by our advertisers, this time for the next great Heinz commercial. (more…)

Apparently, the placing of mysterious electronic devices at major transportation hubs is cause for concern. Go figure.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070511/ap_on_re_us/suspicious_devices

What a boon for these guys, I’m sure. As the saying goes, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”, even if Turner is a short a little cash for legal fees. But what about Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens? Sounds like a bit of scapegoat-ism going down… Hopefully the bonus covers it.

Man, some of the best design and advertising stuff I see is coming out of Brazil these days. Eye-candy galore and an apparent “can-do” attitude (some of these studios are too small to making work of this callibre). Case in point:

http://www.seagullsfly.com/ (well, these dudes are quite big, actually)

And, ok, their interactivity is a bit weak (and one-trick-pony-ish), but their style, eye for detail, and execution values are undeniable.

While we’re on the subject of Brazillians, here’s a shoutout to my bud, Mauricio: www.thesoulsurfer.net