BandwidthCamp

Tim Zuckert, president-CEO of Shift Control Media, has penned a piece over at AdAge; Become One With the Game. He gives a nice overview of gaming and why more brands, Geico and Aflac, should get involved with video games.

• Games are a reflection of your brand; they should be original and entertaining first and foremost.
• Just as marketers wouldn’t spend all their money to produce a TV spot and leave nothing for media, they shouldn’t just drop a games onto their websites with little or no media support.

With numbers like “62% of online consumers play video games each month, while only 11% of marketers employ game-based initiatives.” It’s still a great time to get involved in gaming and using it as part of your overall integrated marketing strategy. The Digital Design Blog from Avenue A | Razorfish gives examples from the consumer electronics, finance & consumer packaged goods industries. As long as it’s not H&R Block leading the way, then we’ll all be ok. We the year half over I hope to see some more great examples of brands trying to enter the gaming space.

Last week I wrote a post about The Sims 2 getting Ikea via product placement within the game. This was a similar deal that Electronic Arts signed with H&M last year and McDonald’s in 2002. The New York Times has a post (Entering Virtual Worlds for Real-Life Pitches) about what the future might hold for The Sims 2 & 3.

Steve Seabolt, vice president for global brand development for The Sims, said Electronic Arts was pursuing similar arrangements with other companies.

The Sims 3 is set to be released next year, with new features like a town center that has plenty of virtual storefronts (read: opportunities for advertising).

That was one of my big questions from last week. What is the next product place for The Sims. I encourage you to check out the article and see what’s next. Could all this, potential, advertising slow down the success of one of the best selling video games of all time?

[Via New York Times]

At 9pm tonight is the premier of the The Andromeda Strain based on a book by Michael Crichton (1969). A&E has developed a video game, as they do for all their other properties, around the mini-series. The filming for the mini-series happened at the Burnaby, BC campus of Simon Fraser University.

The game sets the stage through a mix of video cut scenes and a virtual assistant who helps you as you play through the game. There are four levels and I just finished playing through level one.

As I payed through the level and dissected a body, contained the deadly non-human virus and looked to fight against the Andromeda Strain a la Osmosis Jone I found I started to enjoy the back story to the game. The video cut scenes, as the mini-levels were loading, helped move the story forward and were fun to watch.

I even had the chance to chat with Benjamin Bratt’s character Dr. Jeremy Stone a Professor of bacteriology at University of California, Berkeley and can you believe it a Nobel Prize winner. This was the part of the game I didn’t like as much, the conversation arch wasn’t as robust as I would have liked it. Mind you, I’m talking from a spoiled gamers point of view who is use to playing on PCs and a Xbox 360.

I would go check out the game before tonights premier. You should also check out the blog they having been running since April for the mini-series.

[Via Wikipedia, A&E TV]

Gavin Heaton has a fun piece on Noah Brier’s Brand Tag experiment. The long and short of it is…

First up, you observe a logo and then enter a single word response describing that brand. You can do this for as many logos as you wish. But then, the best bit — you can browse the brands and see the responses as a tag cloud — with the more common descriptors shown in large type.

Check out Gavin’s post and see what all the fuss is about. I’ve been playing around with it over the last week and love seeing what my friends and peers from the world over think and feel.

Jonathan Kleiman over at AllFacebook.com has a look at Breaking Bad’s Facebook game.

This app is a fantastic example of a marketing solution for a product that can attract people who are not necessarily searching for it or anything in particular. This is why Facebook adds value over search marketing. The vast majority of people who find out about Breaking Bad through this app will have been looking for a game and have found the show. It’s also a great way for fans of the show to spread the word. Try that with a keyword ad.

I’ve to check out the game and see how well it does at marketing the TV show. I’ll do a mini review of the game in a few months.. if it’s still around.

[Via AllFacebook]