We’ve written a new whitepaper for people working in the children’s marketing and entertainment industries.

It provides an overview of current practices and advertising recommendations in children’s online media and marketing. Current practices are commendable, while more can be done to ensure that children are not exploited. mod7 presents ideas for discussion as well as practical case studies to support those ideas.

Download the whitepaper here: Empowering Imagination: A Primer on the Ethical Imperative in Children’s Marketing & Entertainment (PDF, 500 KB).

Let us know what you think!

We’re on site at KidScreen 2009, February 11 to 13 in the Big Apple. Find us, and you might score one of our limited edition collectible mod7 card sets!

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…)