Bethesda production director Ashley Cheng believes poor messaging is hurting Bungie s new Halo. According to Cheng, while the game has a very respectable 85 percent score on Metacritic perception of it as an expansion and complaints about gameplay length are raising questions about the premium price point.
Read more of the comments at Gamesindustry.biz.
Netflix seems to be gearing up for the end of their exclusivity on 360. The CEO says the company has its sights on PS3 and Wii, then possibly Blu-ray players and internet TVs, and iPhones somewhere down the line.
Read more at Fast Company.
As the result of a class-action settlement, Facebook’s intrusive ad service Beacon beams no more. The settlement also has Facebook donating generously to establish an online privacy foundation. Read more at LA Times.
A further report on the story cites the company has hired Nielsen BrandLift, an opt-in service with built-in privacy features. Read the report at Fast Company.
Florida police raiding a suspected drug house put some of the evidence to good use, and were caught on video. The only off-putting part of their otherwise spirited playtime with Wii Bowling could be the latex gloves, and maybe the disturbing lack of snacks.
While there is a link to the long video, the story says it all at G4TV The Feed.
The NFL has opened its venerable shrine, virtually, to advertisers and marketers. Blitzing the play are men s apparel company Van Heusen and its partner retailer JC Penney. They are teaming up with the NFL in a campaign that gives fans a voice on future Hall of Fame inductions through branded web and social media sites. The game industry could collectively be wondering how EA Sports isn’t at the forefront of this move.
Read about the multi-prong campaign, and its potential pitfalls, at Ad Age.
Four stalwarts of online services and networking are positioned to take over Twitter. In the article, IPG Emerging Media Lab argues that these companies, already playing essential roles in our networked lives, are arming themselves with new tech and lessons applied from everything that propelled Twitter’s popularity. The only new player among the four named by the firm is Foursquare, a well-funded location-based networking service going after the growing mobile networking trend.
Read their analysis at iMedia Connection.
Ad Age uncovers the growing influence of PR in how major brands are marketed. Some companies are even combining the chief marketing and communication roles into a single position. The importance of consumer relations through social media is one part of it.
The story highlights how chief communication officers are defining the new role at big brand companies such as IBM, American Airlines and Intuit. Read more at Ad Age.
Web design site Smashing Magazine has all sorts of tips and templates for your Twitter page. As in the samples provided, for major brands it seems less is more. For Joe Blog Everything, it might be all about putting lipstick on his pig.
Check out the design advice and samples at Fast Company.
Abbey Klaassen’s weekly chart lists the top 10 viral videos from two weeks prior, with number of views and percentage change in views for each. As long as Ad Age keeps posting this excellent round-up, [a]listdaily will keep bringing it to you.
This week, Sony’s video promoting their low-light cameras and perhaps introducing a new extreme sport for soccer cum bullfighting fans sneaks into the top of the viralsphere.
Check out the full list, and read why Sony’s spot succeeds at Ad Age.
Todd Wasserman sums up the impetus for Norton’s clever metaphor in this spot when he points out the challenge in visualizing software in TV ads. For Norton’s ad it starts with casting UFC fighter and King of the Web Brawlers Kimbo Slice to represent a cyber-criminal. Then they portray a caterpillar to represent user identity. It gets more surreal from there.
Check out the TV spot, and read Wasserman try to make sense of it all, at BrandFreak.
