Creative Traction » Branding

Getting something for nothing never worked

Duane Brown — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:52:32 +0000

Last Thursday I got a message from EtiSepia on Twitter out of no where. She works on the HR/recruitment team at Freshbooks here in Toronto and wanted me to retweet her job openings at the company. I’ve never chatted with Eti in person or online before this message hit my @reply box last Thursday around 1pm. But she felt she could send me a message to spread her jobs around.

I’ve a Freshbooks account, which I don’t use as I’ve not taken the time to transfer over from my Blink Sale account. And I’ve been known to tweet more then a few job openings as I know a handful of friends are looking for a job. However, those are jobs I’ve posted of my own free will and not someone coming to me for a favor without me knowing who they are to begin with, which is getting me to the point of this post’s title. I sent her the following message:

@EtiSepia Thanks for the note. I might RT your job at Freshbooks but it’d be nice if you connect with me first before asking for something. (Twitter post)

@EtiSepia As far as I know, we’ve never talked before or repeatly. Asking me to do you something is a weird way to introduce yourself to me. (Twitter post)

In the long run of doing business you can’t get something for nothing. You’ve to be willing to give back and help out other people before you can start to go around and ask everyone to help you. I’d have love to post @EtiSepia job’s but she should have tried to connect with me first and foremost. Maybe look me up and see that I had a Freshbook’s account and see if there was a way she could have helped me. Even a simple hi a few weeks ago would have gone off better then just sending me that first message. A friend over at Freshbooks gave Eti some helpful hints and hopefully she’ll be able to learn from this experience.

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Review: Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk

Duane Brown — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:55:01 +0000

About a week ago I finished reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It. Even though a good chunk of the book was things I already knew. It was the part about finding your passion and digging deep into it that caught my attention.

I’ve been wanting to do a video series/show for the last three or four years but always got stuck on the concept for the show. I wanted to do something related to video games but didn’t want it to be a video game review show. There are already more then enough of those online and on TV. I thought about doing a show called Social Media Minds looking at the people who help plan and lead within the social media arena and how they go about it. I’ve sat on the idea since September as I liked it but couldn’t say I loved it. I was fearful that it lacked some real long-term potential. What would I do if social media wasn’t hot in five years…. would I rebrand the show or stop it all together?

So I sat on it and after getting about half way through the book it hit me. It wasn’t a killer mainstream idea but it was one I had passion for and could see the long-term potential for. I recently redid my Twitter bio and it reads:

Passionate digital marketer & video gamer helping clients connect with their communities online.

So I’ve decided that I want to do a show on digital marketing/marketing in the video game industry. Connect with the people behind such campaigns as Prototype experience, Dawn of War II’s Publicity, The Sims 2 and H&M, Halo 3 and even Sony’s fake blog scrap up. Finding out how they came up with the idea, and getting to know the names and faces behind these campaigns. Still trying to figure out a name for the show but I’ll be working on that along with who to talk with.

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Hibernation: The state of my Twitter agency account

Duane Brown — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:00:29 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about why I started my agency account (@CreativeHQ) recently. I wanted to track other agencies and connect with them outside of my personal account (@DuaneBrown). However, I’m finding at least right now that it doesn’t make tons of sense to manage both these accounts. There isn’t a lot of content that I only want to share with my agency followers and not with the wonderful people I’m connecting with on my personal account. Also, clients and people hire me for my personality and knowledge more then anything. Instead of having a “faceless” agency account right now, I rather people connect with me at my personal one.

I’ve decided for the interm to put my agency account in hibernation. If I ever grow beyond just me and have partners/employees then I may reactivate it. I’m not really sure right now. However, I’m sure that this is the right decision at this time. I’m going to keep the account alive, so I can use TweetDeck’s group funtion to keep tabs on the firms I’m following from that account. However, you won’t see any activity from it for now.

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Why I plan to attend less local events

Duane Brown — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:35:06 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot over the last couple weeks about what is really important to me. Having great experiences and seeing the world became a recurring theme. Making sure I put my time towards areas that allowed this to happen was a key strategy if I wanted to see the world. After using You Say Yeah’s Calendar for the last couple months, I’ve come to the following conclusions:

You see a lot of the same people at a lot of these events
There are way to many “must attend” events happening on the same night

Maybe my time is better spent not attending every event but chosing wisely on which ones I go to. This new found time is now spent traveling to see the world beyond Toronto and to some extend Canada. I hope to meet some people along the way and become a better person for it. The idea that I don’t have the time is false as I need to make the time for things that are important to me. Here are to new places and uncharted territory.

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Millennials: United we stand, divided we fall

Duane Brown — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:30:40 +0000

Big Mommas House Movie Still

I was reading a post on AdAge today called Bad News Could Be the Best Thing for Millennials. It talked about how this recession could make us become the best generation in history. However, first we are going to have to do a few things…

Remember what your mama told you
Get off your butt and innovate
Things will never be the same

… were a few of the ideas that the author had as a member of our generation. This got me thinking a lot about the last 4 months and all the networking I’ve been doing. Recently I’ve seen people within our generation act friendly to someone and the minute their back is turned they bad mouth that person until the cows come home.

This isn’t going to help our generation get out of this current crisses or prove those nay sayers wrong. If someone wronged you fine, karam will get them back one day. But don’t go and act friendly to their face and then bad mouth them the second they go out for a smoke break. Plus with the way social media is going. You’ll be found out if you start playing all Two-Face like between the online and real world. And in the end, this only hurts your own reputation between other people.

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Interview with Nikolas Badminton from Blast Radius – Part 1

Duane Brown — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:27:02 +0000

This week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Nikolas Badminton from Blast Radius. He’s one of the Senior Digital Strategist at the company. Blast Radius has been around since 1997 and works in the online space. Their goal is to help major consumer-facing brands revolutionize marketing and branding. In part 1 of this interview, Nik and I get into what he does at Blast Radius, how strategy has changed over the last couple years and what one thing he would love to change about our business. In part 2 we talk about the three tiers of media and what some of the major changes that are going to take place in the industry.

What do you exactly do at Blast Radius?
I’m a Senior Digital Strategist at Blast Radius. I’ve been with the company since August after moving from the UK to Vancouver. Most of my clients are in the video game and entertainment space including Nintendo and Electronic Arts. We help clients start develop a business strategy and from there we look at what technology or tactics might make sense for them, which include websites, gaming, widget, or social media.

How has strategy changed over the last couple years with clients?
We’re finding that a lot more clients are starting to adjust their media mix spend. Instead of spending a lot of money on a media that will quickly fizzle out, clients are transferring a lot of that money into digital media. Many companies still believe that TV and print are the vehicles that ensure good reach and return – where in fact these are just ‘rented’ spaces for marketing at the end of the day. Digital marketing (including social marketing) ensures a persistent relationship between your client, customer and their purchase. Leaders in their fields, such as Disney, ESPN, Electronic Arts, Starbucks and Nike (i.e. Nike TV) see the benefit from moving funds from traditional media to digital.

For digital to engage video game consumers and bring them back time and time again, they need to think beyond traditional digital advertizing and ensure that customers have access to fresh & consistent content on their different digital platforms:

• Up-to-date information on their site, blogs, widgets etc.

• Compelling content
o User-generated content, ratings and feedback
o Original content videos provided by the companies (interviews, tips/tricks, behind the scene’s)

The ability to share & syndicate the content across multiple communities, forums, blogs, and social sites on the web is the real key to helping connect our client(s) with their customers. If we build a relationship between our client and their customer that can lead to doing some cool campaigns with lifecycle (permission) marketing to help communicate updates and bring them back once again.

If you could change one thing about the industry/business, what would it be?
If I could change one thing it would be that all parts of the video game business start thinking holistically about consumer relationships. Games studios, brand managers, product managers, marketing (traditional and digital) all collaborate from the 1st moment that the game is discussed and leverage their knowledge to help build those relationships with the consumer.

Stay tuned for part 2 where we talk about the three tiers of media, what some of the major changes that are going to take place in the industry and who some of the major players are that are making these changes a reality. You can contact Nikolas Badminton here.

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Why a Facebook Page is similar to nurturing a garden

Duane Brown — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 02:57:09 +0000

I had the please of talk with an account manager this week about how a Facebook Page is like nurturing a garden. They both take time/investment, planning and passion.

Time/Investment: Regardless of if you are starting a garden at home, or a Facebook Page for your latest product. You’ve to make the effort to put the time in for both of them. You can’t simple check on these once a week and hope that everything will work out. You should be connecting 3 or 4 days a week if not ever other day to make sure everything is ok. You want to make sure your garden has enough soil, water and sunlight. You need to make sure your Facebook page is growing with information (threads, blog post, new pictures/video) and that there is value and a real reason for people to sign up and come back on a regular bases.

Orphaned Facebook Page

Planning: Much like making an investment of your times. You need an action plan to make everything happen. Are you going to put some red or white roses or do you prefer some yellow flowers in your garden. Knowing which flowers and shrubs work will together before you start planting in the Spring means that your garden will be a bigger success as you move into the summer. What will you update your Facebook page with today, next week and two months from now. You need to know because you want to satisfy large snackers and media snackers. I’ve had clients who just wanted to wing a Facebook Page and the success of that page was short lived. As the saying goes, those who fail to plan, plan to fail.

Passion: A garden and a Facebook Page need to be run by people with passion. As my friend Richard Millington would say, Be The Result You Want To See, and bring some passion to that garden and Facebook Page. People can tell when you are faking it and you don’t want to get called out. Making sure your next Facebook Page is run by someone in your company that brings passion to the office each and every day is vital. Their passion will shine through and your Facebook Page will be better for it.

I admit there is no guarantee of success for any company if you do the above. But if you are not willing to invest some time every week, plan for your long-term goal and make sure your Facebook Page is run by people with a passion for your business. Then I think you should scrape the idea. I’ve seen more then a few Facebook Pages that are now orphans. This doesn’t look good for your company and brand and tells people you made the page for all the wrong reasons.

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Become One With the Game

Duane Brown — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:39:19 +0000

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.

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Product Placement: What’s Next for The Sims?

Duane Brown — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:00:10 +0000

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]

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The Andromeda Strain [Advergaming]

Duane Brown — Mon, 26 May 2008 14:00:05 +0000

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]

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