Game marketing is usually one level up, and there’s a lot to learn there from those trying to capturing attention of consumers.
One campaign that has been making the rounds is APB: All Points Bulletin‘s take on The Human Avatar, a real-time experiment in identity and transformation.

During several stages, Josh, a fan chosen by APB’s online community, will subject himself to a extreme makeover: hair style, piercings, tattoos, and clothing, just as it would happen with the in-game avatar personalization tool.

With 3 stages left, the piercing episode was pretty hardcore but i’m curious about the tattoo :) . Oh, and you can follow Josh’s hardships @human_avatar or check the pictures on Twitter.

I’m not much into games (time is precious) but as far as marketing is concerned, this does level up. Or are reality shows venturing into videogames?

For the past 3 years, dozens of leading marketeers, writers and thinkers have collaborated on a book that brings some of the best insights on modern marketing. Led by Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton, this third book in the Age of Conversation series brings together authors from across the world, with diverse and practical insights for the changing nature of business today.

Chapters include topics like Conversational branding, Influence, Getting to work, Corporate conversations, Measurement, In the boardroom, Innovation and execution, Pitching social media and Identities (the topic I wrote a short essay for).

With cover illustration by Chris Wilson and our new publisher Channel V Books (from co-authors Gretel Going & Kate Fleming), i’m counting on you to order a copy once it’s released, specially considering the sales profits are donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Get to know the rest of the authors or follow the Twitter AOC3 list created by  Steve Ponder:

• Adam Joseph
• Priyanka Sachar
• Mark Earls
• Cory Coley-Christakos
• Stefan Erschwendner
• Paul Hebert
• Jeff De Cagna
• Thomas Clifford
• Phil Gerbyshak
• Jon Burg
• Toby Bloomberg
• Shambhu Neil Vineberg
• Joseph Jaffe
• Uwe Hook
• Steve Roesler
• Michael E. Rubin
• anibal casso
• Steve Woodruff
• Steve Sponder
• Becky Carroll
• Tim Tyler
• Chris Wilson
• Beth Harte
• Tinu Abayomi-Paul
• Dan Schawbel
• Carol Bodensteiner
• Trey Pennington
• David Weinfeld
• Dan Sitter
• Vanessa DiMauro
• Ed Brenegar
• David Zinger
• Brett T. T. Macfarlane
• Efrain Mendicuti
• Deb Brown
• Brian Reich
• Gaurav Mishra
• Dennis Deery
• C.B. Whittemore
• Gordon Whitehead
• Heather Rast
• Cam Beck
• Hajj E. Flemings
• Joan Endicott
• Cathryn Hrudicka
• Jeroen Verkroost
• Karen D. Swim
• Christopher Morris
• Joe Pulizzi
• Leah Otto
• Corentin Monot
• Karalee Evans
• Leigh Durst
• David Berkowitz
• Kevin Jessop
• Lesley Lambert
• Duane Brown
• Peter Korchnak
• Mark Price
• Dustin Jacobsen
• Piet Wulleman
• Mike Maddaloni
• Ernie Mosteller
• Scott Townsend
• Nick Burcher
• Frank Stiefler
• Steve Olenski
• Rich Nadworny
• John Rosen
• Tim Jackson
• Suzanne Hull
• Len Kendall
• Amber Naslund
• Wayne Buckhanan
• Mark McGuinness
• Caroline Melberg
• Andy Drish
• Oleksandr Skorokhod
• Claire Grinton
• Angela Maiers
• Paul Williams
• Gary Cohen
• Armando Alves
• Sam Ismail
• Gautam Ramdurai
• B.J. Smith
• Tamera Kremer
• Eaon Pritchard
• Brendan Tripp
• Adelino de Almeida
• Jacob Morgan
• Casey Hibbard
• Andy Hunter
• Julian Cole
• Debra Helwig
• Anjali Ramachandran
• Jye Smith
• Drew McLellan
• Craig Wilson
• Karin Hermans
• Emily Reed
• David Petherick
• Katie Harris
• Gavin Heaton
• Dennis Price
• Mark Levy
• George Jenkins
• Doug Mitchell
• Mark W. Schaefer
• Helge Tenno
• Douglas Hanna
• Marshall Sponder
• James Stevens
• Ian Lurie
• Ryan Hanser
• Jenny Meade
• Jeff Larche
• Sacha Tueni and Katherine Maher
• David Svet
• Jessica Hagy
• Simon Payn
• Joanne Austin-Olsen
• Mark Avnet
• Stanley Johnson
• Marilyn Pratt
• Mark Hancock
• Steve Kellogg
• Michelle Beckham-Corbin
• Michelle Chmielewski
• Amy Mengel
• Veronique Rabuteau
• Peter Komendowski
• Andrea Vascellari
• Timothy L Johnson
• Phil Osborne
• Beth Wampler
• Amy Jussel
• Rick Liebling
• Eric Brody
• Arun Rajagopal
• Dr Letitia Wright
• Hugh de Winton
• David Koopmans
• Aki Spicer
• Jeff Wallace
• Don Frederiksen
• Charles Sipe
• Katie McIntyre
• James G Lindberg & Sandra Renshaw
• David Reich
• Lynae Johnson
• Jasmin Tragas
• Deborah Chaddock Brown
• Mike O’Toole
• Jeanne Dininni
• Iqbal Mohammed
• Morriss M. Partee
• Katie Chatfield
• Jeff Cutler
• Pete Jones
• Riku Vassinen
• Jeff Garrison
• Kevin Dugan
• Tiphereth Gloria
• Mike Sansone
• Lori Magno
• Valerie Simon
• Nettie Hartsock
• Mark Goren
• Peter Salvitti

Can’t wait to read the great thinking from the “fellowship” !

For many years Google was one of the last companies avoiding mass media advertising (though they’ve done it outside the US). That stronghold ended the last SuperBowl, with the now famous (and parodied) Parisian Love ad:

Even web companies with true fans reach a point when branding becomes necessary to grow a market that’s getting crowded. With many people starting to explore Google’s products and services, an ad that is relevant and tells a powerful story only helps to conquer more users, responding to needs that later get extended to their professional choices (think AdWords or Google Apps).

This need for branding for web companies will become even more evident the next few years, as startups try seduce advertisers by getting more reach and visibility. But instead of using the eyeballs approach, we’ll have a more combined branding approach.

Foursquare, the location based game, and their recent partnerships with Zagat or Marc Jacobs is an example of this sponsorship leveraging a web brand, . Other examples include ExecTweets with Federated Media and Microsoft or even more tactical approaches like the Let It Shine commercial for Honda and Vimeo.

Larger brands should take notice of these opportunities, by teaming up with web brands on relevant, win-win partnerships. As for web companies, Branding, even on a different form, is one step to leave their Beta label behind.

Cross-posted at The Trendwatch

If it is not texting and looking and TV, it’s computer and listen to my iPod (…) If i know i’m gonna miss a show i record it.

I have facebook on my cellphone. I could research a word, do anything on my phone.

— Diamond, 14

The Kaiser Family Foundation released today a report on Generation M(2), a research on media habits of 8-18 year olds, with a sample of more than 2,000 young people across the US. Impressive how this 100% connected generation is using mobile as the main gateway to digital content. Not to mention the multitasking habits. But you knew that already, right?

Key findings of the report include:

• Over the past five years, Young people have increased the daily consumption of media from 6:21 to 7:38

  

• An explosion in mobile and online media has fueled
  the increase in media use among young people.

  

• Youth who spend more time with media report lower grades and lower levels of personal contentment.

For a short overview of what kids have to say, follow the video below:

Nike. Racing. Twitter. Voice recognition.
Oh, just watch the video.

Using an iPhone strapped to their arms and an earphone, simply by pressing a button, the runners were able to share their experiences with the world in real time. The voice message was turned into a text message that was automatically published at thehumanrace.com.ar/envivo/, in their Twitter accounts, and banners on sports vertical portals and news sites.

Good run by BBDO Argentina.

Crossposted at The TrendWatch

Yesterday, the quintessential online ad resource BannerBlog featured two ads for Smart. Both pulled dynamic data — weather and maps — to build a display ad unit. I could be wrong, but the data source was probably some sort of API. For those not so versed in acronyms, Wikipedia to the rescue:

An application programming interface (API) is an interface that a software program implements in order to allow other software to interact with it; much in the same way that software might implement a user interface in order to allow humans to interact with it.

Flickr Mosaic: Crayonbox, constructed with Flickr API. Released under a CCommons license by krazydad

Like digital bridges, API’s request standartized information from public (and sometimes private) web services. From USA Spending to Fedex tracking, from Flickr to Google Maps, the interest for APIs has been traditionally confined to B2B/ERP and the Social Web. But lately the concept is extending beyond these areas: with developers creating exciting and unexpected uses with the new data available, and with consumer brands and the ad industry starting to let go of their closed silos, in essence “letting one thousand flowers bloom“. A good consumer brand example of this trend is the UK grocery chain Tesco, who announced a new API at TechForTesco and invited developers to tinker with its data, search for nutrition facts or send ‘ideas’ to the customer’s ‘ideas inbox’.

Web development frameworks have long been using these large building blocks to enable rapid development by a larger interested audience. They not only ignite the engine of innovation, sometimes stalled by internal corporate politics, but also allow brands to have a comfortable degree of control. With new data sets available, we could start thinking of new kinds of mashups, such as business data built directly into communication solutions, CRM programs feeding custom content or display ads with real-time data, as mentioned in the beginning.

Before a brand dips into this space, it’s challenge is to question which data set respects legal and privacy issues, while at the same time being interesting enough for developers and consumers to act upon. What they shouldn’t be asking is if an API is useful (it’s useful when the data is right).

If you’d like to know more about what’s being done with such web services, I highly recommend checking out the website Programmable Web. It’s a useful resource with over 1500 APIs that have been used in thousands of mashups.

One of these days i promise i’ll share my tons of quotes and random thoughts with visuals at least half as good as these ones from Helge Tennø (aka @Congbo).

His slides are one of the best visual thinking i’ve seen since Armano and Lynette. And don’t forget to check his blog.

When this blog was created i used to follow the Interesting Snippets Flickr series from Lynette. A few months later, she published her book and altough she’s been collecting more interesting quotes, the snippets are long gone. I picked up the habit and started collection my own snippets on Tumblr, and thought it would be great to share a few of these snippets to spice your presentations about digital media.

Photo by occhiovivo

Photo by Mark Busse

Photo by midnightglory

Photo by fensterbme

Photo by william addington

Photo by DHdesign

All pictures were selected from Flickr, under a Creative Commons license, so make sure you credit the authors if you use them.