Top Marketing Trends For Video Games in 2008 [IMO]

I don’t know what this year is going to hold for advertising, marketing and PR as a whole. However, I do know one thing for sure. It’s going to be another year of continues learning and change. After last weeks look at the year we left behind. I thought it would be a good idea to see what the year ahead might look like. Marketing is always in flux and someone somewhere is always coming up with a new service that can aid us or helping change how the game is played.

However, with all things being equal. Here are my thoughts on what will be the top trends for marketing in 2008. The first few are a given I think when we look at 2006 & 2007. After that I think my list becomes a bit more interesting and maybe even a bit wild and crazy.

1. In-game ads continue to dominate all platforms.
2. Branded games and advergames make an aggressive push into the mainstream.
3. Ads appear in more mainstream places like daily newspapers, movie theater magazines & on public transit property.
4. More real world inclusion of video game characters. I’ll explain what I mean by this in a minute.
5. ARGs become a more mainstream fixture in marketing plans. However, all won’t be as elaborate as ilovebees or Trent Reznor’s Year Zero.

I think number 4 and 5 are tied together a bit. But what I meant by “real world inclusion of video game characters” is that more marketers are going to take their characters and put them in places that we wouldn’t normal see digital characters. Second Life being on the cover of Business Week is great and Tony Montana on MTV’s Cribs is interesting in a how long did it take them to produce that video kind of way. With both of these events happening over the last couple years and Halo going more mainstream then anyone could have hopped for. I see a future where we completely blur the lines between digital and real world marketing to the point that we treat our digital characters as if there where real humans.

In the end I don’t know if any of my trends will come true, but I do plan to look at them again at the end of the year and maybe even half way through the summer.

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