The politics of in-game advertisingby Blair Caplinger

You know that in-game advertising has gained acceptance when political candidates venture into the space. According to Associated Press, Barack Obama has purchased ad space from EA Sports to become the first presidential candidate to successfully utilize the medium.

In-game advertising touches an audience that is typically hard to reach — young males, roughly 18 to 34. EA Spokesperson, Holly Rockwood comments, “What we're trying to do is offer ads in games where we're simulating a real-world environment, so our racing games, our sports games lend themselves to that."

The ads purchased by the Obama campaign are appearing from October 6 to November 3 in Xbox 360 games such as "Burnout Paradise," "Madden 09," "Nascar 09," "NHL 09" and "Skate." These games are among the most popular in the EA catalogue of sports titles and are rated for play by the Entertainment Software Rating Board for everyone aged 10 and older.

Rockwood elaborated that the company accepts ads from “credible advertisers” and that the messages do not reflect the views or policies of the company. She added that one advertising agency that works with Electronic Arts had contacted the McCain campaign about advertising, but that the Republican’s camp passed.

Mechanicalise something idiosyncraticby Bryan Wills

In 1975, Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt produced a deck of cards called "Oblique Strategies - Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas".

The authors described the original deck as follows:

"These cards evolved from our separate observations on the principles underlying what we were doing. Sometimes they were recognized in retrospect (intellect catching up with intuition), sometimes they were identified as they were happening, sometimes they were formulated.

They can be used as a pack (a set of possibilities being continuously reviewed in the mind) or by drawing a single card from the shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case,the card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear. They are not final, as new ideas will present themselves, and others will become self-evident."

Fear not, my digital strategists with your multi-touch enabled revolutionary mobile devices crying out for a special purpose like Steve Martin before his movies sucked... All 5 versions of the Oblique Strategies deck have been turned into a free iPhone app. (available now from the iTunes App Store.

Here are a couple gems from the original deck:

• "Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance"
• "Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them"
• "Faced with a choice, do both" (that's what she the card said ;)

I can't mention Brian Eno without linking to Ambient 1: Music for Airports. A defining moment in ambient music history (and a damn fine soundtrack to code software to). -B

The mobile social network by Daniel Davenport

Mobile data connectivity has been a slow road. Municipal Wifi did not catch on and the whitespace efforts have been jammed up by the NAB.  A report by Pew this year "shows that 62% of American adults have either accessed the internet wirelessly or used non-voice data applications, such as texting, emailing, taking a picture, or recording video, with a handheld. On the average day, 42% of those with cell phones or other wireless-enabled handhelds use the devices for at least one non-voice data application."

Emarketer predicted in April "that over 800 million users worldwide will access and participate in social networks via their mobile device in 2012, up from 82 million in 2007.

Although the total mobile social network user base in 2012 will be under 20% of the worldwide mobile user population, it is likely these users will have a disproportionate impact on marketing, media and mobile communications because creating and sharing digital content represents much of the social networking experience."

An ABI report out this month shows a strong correlation between mobile social activity and users of Facebook or MySpace. 

From the report:

“The social network is increasingly becoming a central hub for communication across online and mobile domains for many consumers,” said research director Michael Wolf. “To a degree, it allows them to centralize messaging, communication and even digital media consumption through a centralized property on various screens. We believe this centralization of a consumer’s digital lifestyle through social networks will only increase adoption of mobile social networking in coming years.”

As next generation wireless technology begins to fall into place the desire for mobile data applications is sure to increase. Samsung recently demonstrated a new WiMax system capable of 149Mbps down and 43Mbps up, which would certainly be a game changer when available.

With the consumer desire and technical capability starting to line up companies are begining to aprove more demanding mobile applications.  One such company is Next2Friends.

From the site: "Next2Friends, the mobile social media platform, was created to deliver content and connections that entertain, engage and enhance life. Bringing together the full capabilities of both mobile and PC-based internet technology, the comprehensive suite of applications and features provide rich media, commercial and communication services to today’s connected consumer."

Next2Friends community provides the ability to do two click photo uploads and location based social networking. 

Key features include:

• Live – true, real-time video streaming from mobile device to web.
• Ask – opinion gathering and decision making on the move.
• Snap Up – automatic streaming of images captured while out and about.
• Tag & Meet – intelligent matching of virtual profiles in the physical world.

Mobile social networks will greatly increase the range of lifecasting projects like Justin.tv and Kyte.tv.  As more wireless providers preinstall applications like Qik and Zannel, sharig video elements of your daily activites is going to become even more pervasive.

Leaning forward, looking backwardby Robert Davis

Aaron Gustafson has a good post at A List Apart today on the concept of progressive enhancement, which is a different way of looking at how websites should be developed in order to provide satisfactory experiences in a variety of browsers (old, new, "differently abled" e.g., mobile, etc.) In a nutshell (sorry, Gustafson uses a candy-coated peanut analogy in his post) progressive enhancement focuses on content, while the more widely embraced and older alternative approach, graceful degradation, is more focused on the browser itself.

This got me thinking about scalability. Progressive enablement is focused on the scalability of the essential nugget of what makes the experience valuable, rather than the the trappings of the experience -- the degree to which a particular browser pays fidelity to, say, your fancy navigation scheme. We also tend to think and talk a lot about scalability of technology, but as a strategist, I generally worry more about the scalability of a strategic idea. This notion has a couple of dimensions:

Will the idea scale for your market? Will it accomodate and actually become stronger with the progressive inclusion of more and more voices and opinions outside of your control? Does it enable your brand to evolve with the input of your audience - or does it position your brand in a narrowly constrained box incapable of growth? Conversely, does it have value when it is still lightly populated?

Will the idea scale for your business? Assuming the best case – your idea is successful and widely adopted – will it outstrip your operational capacity? Upset the balance of core competencies? Take the brand to a place where, for whatever reason, you deem it not appropriate or supportable for it to go?

Open-ended musings for a Friday morning. Let me know if they resonate.

UPDATE: From the adlab, the National Debt Clock runs out of room – in a depressing but timely illustration of the scalability of ideas.

Thinking Visuallyby Blair Caplinger

If seeing is believing then visualizing is understanding. There is a growing movement dedicated to the exploration of visual language to improve brainstorming, planning and communication. At the epicenter of this movement is the organization, Visthink.  “Visthink’s goal is to build a global community dedicated to visualization in all forms of learning and communication.  The group’s next conference will be held October 12-14 in Berlin Germany.

Our group has become very aware of the roll that visual thinking plays in our own ideation process. Developing your team’s visualization styles and skills is a high payoff activity.  In my own study of the art of visualization I have found that simplicity is the key to success.  Case in point, the chart featured below. I wish I had thought of that.

Finding the weakest linkby Robert Davis

I needed to schedule service for my wife's new car. I used the handy form provided by the dealer, and specified email as my preferred medium for response on the time I had requested. Two days later, no response - other than the new car sales emails I was immediately signed up for, in blatant disregard of CANSPAM.

By the way, the same thing happened with my car when I used the dealer's form. And the  unsubscribe link didn't work, either.

It's a pathetic story, really - as manufacturers spend millions every year to match their digital offerings to the changing buying behaviors of consumers, they're effectively innovating yet another way for the dealers to let down the promise established by the manufacturers investments in their brands.

Do you have a clear view of your entire customer lifecycle - and what happens at each digital touchpoint - even the ones you may not own?

Agile for interactive marketers: new executive briefing from THINKby Robert Davis

Our latest THINKmail introduces some things interactive marketers should know about Agile, including

• A quick overview of Agile's origins and objectives
• An overview of what works – and what can be challenging about Agile for marketers
• An action plan for getting ahead of the curve

As we point out in the article, it's inevitable that IT organizations will push for Agile at some point and in some form – and essential for marketers to be driving some key pieces of the agenda. Marketers own the channel metrics, and they need to have a strong voice in how the organization commits to delivering the enabling technologies required to meet those numbers.

You can download the PDF here.

Understand the mindset, not just the media momentby Robert Davis

According to ExactTarget's 2008 Channel Preference Survey,  younger consumers favor IM and text messaging for personal communication, but they prefer email for marketing communication. And 56% of those 18-24 had made a purchase because of a marketing message received vial email, down a little from 35-44 year olds, 66% of whom had purchased vial email.

The distinction is a clear indicator of the need to go beyond media usage alone as a targeting criteria, and to define the mindset associated with the use of a particular media form in order to understand the potential role of marketing for a particular user of a particular medium.

THINK's model of media usage clearly defines texting and IM usage among 18-24 year olds as an "interaction" mindset, and commercial email as a "transactional" mindset. Based on this model, brands would be wise to take very different approaches to each medium. This latest research bears out the distinction.

I got 2 touchscreens and a microphone...by Bryan Wills

A long time ago in a DJ booth far, far away I used to spend my time mixing these odd black discs that contained a groove on each side. Looking back it sounds strange, but it seemed quite natural at the time and the warm sound of vinyl is far superior to this day imho.

When digital audio became the standard towards the end of the 1900's, most deejays I knew preferred the feel of mixing vinyl. The main thing that bugged me about mixing CDs was not being able to "read" the groove of the song and predict breaks and changes in the music. This was solved with software/turntable based systems like Serato Sratch Live which allow you to manipulate mp3s on a laptop using synced timecode LPs on turntables. I was skeptical at first, but it's the real deal. I would probably feel weird carrying a thumb-drive instead of milk-crates, but I am sure I could get over that quickly! I'm not sure how you get your friends into the club free by letting them help carry your thumb-drive tho.

If you are wondering, yes, there is a current point to all this. It appears someone has taken digital mixing a step further using some flat mounted touch panels.

They call it Attigo TT. Check out the video. It doesn't look like it would have the same feel as spinning records, but maybe I'm just old school. Or perhaps just old.

Vi-Vikki-Vikki-Video...aw yeah!by Bryan Wills

I remember seeing this commercial and thinking how cool it would be to manipulate a video by dragging the objects contained within it. Manipulating real-life objects like the commercial simulates by reaching into it and dragging cars and people around seemed unrealistic (however difficult it is to convince some clients of that!), but objects in a video?...hmmm... and that is where some other shiny object caught my eye....and...what were we talking about?

Oh ya...direct manipulation of video. So it appears someone infinitely more focused than I has figured out how to actually do it. They call it DimP: A Direct Manipulation Video Player. By evaluating the motion of a video and mapping the paths of moving objects they are able to enable those objects to be used much like the scrub-bar typically found in video players. Check it out.