Gaming…it ain’t pimple faced kids anymore!

Long have I (and be honest, many of you) been harassed and degraded by parents, girlfriends, and yes wives about playing online games (sometimes by bosses too, even at 8pm).

But now it’s official, and very very professional.

Statistics show that the average age of an online gamer is about 30-35, with 45% of these being women (not my wife, unfortunately!).

In the USA, they even have the MLG: Major League Gaming.  Think MBA, think MLB (i.e. Major League Baseball.

See their massive website (by leading US digital agency Rokkan) here:

With $20,000 winner prize money per circuit, per game type, “men” of my age are making an absolute fortune as professional gamers, and their profiles are starting the generate serious advertising dollar competition to real life sporting professionals.

Super Stars of MLG

Prize Money:

I think perhaps I might hang up my boots for the mighty Mosman AL2 Football club and create the mighty Mosman FC on the PS3 and play PES2008 semi-pro!

What a bunch of total tossers!

It took 20 very long years for the British to beat Australia at the Olympics, and my god aren’t they just the very worst of winners?

They’re bad losers, we know that (actually, they’re really good at losing, just don’t take it well!), but this is just bloody ridiculous!

Roll on the Ashes, I’ll drive the truck around London.

Moreover, when they languish in 7th or 8th place in 2012, I’ll be at the Closing Ceremony to personally dish out some retribution…

(Having said all that, it is a very funny example of QTOM (Quick Thinking Opportunistic Marketing).

Oh, and what’s with their rubbish logo?

Using Sound in Online Ads

Using Sound in Online Ads

Often in the recent past when I’ve gone to a media website (i.e. SMH or NineMSN) I get confronted with automatically activated advertising, which incorporates sound that is automatically played.

This happens especially when the delivery medium is in the form of video content.

Now, sound adds that extra vital dimension to a message / story / promo / advert, but it is also a top user piss-off factor

Having sound played on your computer whist you are surfing the internet at work kinda “gives the game away”, and actually (in my opinion) damages both the user experience of a media website AND the advertisers brand.

That said, I know lots of sites have implemented user controls to help address this issue with such things as sound toggles and user volume controls, and control over whether the advertising is played automatically with sound or not.

An Innovative Solution Example:
Having said ALL that, I noticed what I think should be the industry standard way of incorporating sound in online advertising which is totally user controlled at the users discretion, with optimal ease.

This execution goes to the Tropic Thunder advertising on GameSpot.com.au, and it is the first “RollOver” for sound execution that I’ve personally seen.

Check it live here

Screenshots:

Digital Excellence from Russia

Russian interactive and digital agencies, if the following site is anything to go by, are just as talented (if not more so) than US, UK and Australian agencies.

Check out this gem here.

Produced by Russian agency Deluxe Interactive in Moscow

“Slugging”

Listening to Adam Spencer on my drive to work (as I do each morning) on ABC 702 he referenced a new trend (or fad or something) called “Slugging“.

In essence, Slugging is a quasi formal socially driven car pooling concept, born in the USA (Washington DC actually).

Slugs (i.e. hopeful passengers) gather in “known” slug-gathering locations, and drivers pull up with destination signs in the car window – those slugs who wish to go to that location then pile in, allowing the driver to go on the 3-person or more freeway lanes.

This has become so popular that the unwritten etiquette of slugging has now been written, along with helping additional information for newbie-sluggers.

Find out more here.

Slugging was born from as viral beginning, where slugs connected with drivers via word of mouth / email / message boards, and has now evolved to the Blackberry and mainstream internet.

Not too long ago, hitchhiking (which is essentially what slugging is) was reserved for the backpackers of the world and desperados, not for the silk tie corporate man and women of modern society.

So this got me thinking, has social networking started making real and fundamental changes in the way our society now behaves?

Questions:

1) So has social networking made this fundamental change in social behavior?
2) Does this occur in Sydney/Melbourne?

Start a Slugging Operation:
Want to start a Slugging Operation in Sydney? Tips on how can be read here.

Marketing/Advertising Potential?
Could be a used as a good sponsorship or experiential marketing experiment for a start-up brand (i.e. GoGet.com.au)

About Viral Marketing…

Doing my regular 7am-8am daily crawl and read of my subscribed RSS blog feeds, and search for new ones, I came across the Naked Communications website/blog this morning.

And I became an instant fan!

This article posted by Simon from Naked talks about Viral Marketing.  And it’s like I’ve just found a long lost brother in World War II where the enemy is all the creative and traditional advertising suits, and I’ve been the poor bastard trying to educate them solo on Digital.

Now when the next discussion on doing a “viral” campaign for a client is raised, I’ll have nice neat print outs of this blog post ready to distribute…

Read it here.

Names: How popular is yours?

Interesting interactive website with which you can determine when your first name was popular (if ever!).

For me (clearly a “classic” name): Stuart

For my wife (clearly a “contemporary” favorite): Fiona

Everyones:

Go here to find out What your name popularity is!

Disturbingly, a lot of people call there child “Jesus“…and there seem to be a lot of people assuming rather too quickly in recent times that their child is the second coming….tools!

You can tell this system is accurate, as the results below prove:

Barry – certainly a name for a dick / tool.

Trevor – certainly a name for a bit of a prick.

Nokia Music Store

Nokia has a fantastic new marketing website used to promote their Nokia Music Store (think iTunes, but for Nokia phones).

The marketing microsite site a sensational experience, god only knows how much they had to pay for the music content on that site, as there are some ROCKING tunes (i.e. Motor Heads “Ace of Spades”….damn that song rocks hard!).

Screen shots:

Visit the site here.

Go and explore the Nokia Music Store

Not geared for Firefox, you have to use IE unfortunately!:

NineMSN Website Down?

Logged into my bookmarked NineMSN favourite News site (www.ninemsn.com.au) to check out latest Olympics results, and it seems they are down…and I mean totally down.

To make sure I went to my trusty website live or dead checker http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

Query:

Result:

WHHHOOOOPS!

Normal service will be restored shortly, I am sure.

Let’s see how long it takes (I first notices at 4:23pm).

I’ll just have to log into www.smh.com.au now I guess…

I wouldn’t want to be their hosting partner…

Update (20/8): site restored at 4:31pm, so about 8 minutes give or take.

Update #2 (21/8): Ninemsn is understood to have had 16 million pages impressions on its Olympics coverage since August 1, with 1.5 million unique browsers.  So that 8 minutes may have been rather costly!

Microsoft Surface Table…and I’m SPEWING!

I’ve just read (as I always do) the latest Amnesia Blog entry.

And I discover to my most envious level yet, that they have not one, but it seems like two Microsoft Surface tables.

I will go straight to hell for my level of envy.

Where did they purchase them from, I must find out!

Rumor (and twitter) have it that even Microsoft in Australia don’t have one yet…and they’re Not Happy Jan!

Everyone talks about the iPhone and how cool that is, but this is on a completely new scale in both size and coolness factor.

View a video demo here.

The pitch possibilities, the fun, the…damn it to hell I’m too sick to write more!