ADVER-GAMING

                                             Battlefield 3 shipped with a cross-promo poster for Mass Effect 3

It didn’t dawn on me ‘til the car ride home that I LOVES ME SOME GAMES.

This thought process was instigated by the distinct possibility that I was going to playing the new Battlefield installment upon arriving at my house. It LITRALLY was the best part of my day. Speaking of which, I ended up teaming up with a good cross-section of section 1 IMC students in taking on the SA’s video game challenge: play Call of Duty and draw a crowd.

                                                              Typical Battlefield 3 Awesomeness.

                                                          Call of Duty: Black Ops advertisement

Every time we play Call of Duty, without exception, we garner wanted attention from students casually strolling about the SA.  As one of the best-selling games of all time, it’s no surprise Call of Duty gathers a crowd. People hover behind us, not unlike the rabid sports fan, giving us live commentary on the match. When we’re at the helm, it’s not uncommon to hear, “Oohhhhhhh!” from one of the on-lookers – eyes eagerly peeled to the screen. 

As everyone loves games, it only makes sense that it would be a future advertising avenue. In Kathy’s class we learned about “adver-gaming” wherein companies use games to advertise products. This extends from traditional video games like Cool Spot where the main character is an anthropomorphic red dot from the 7-UP logo; to more alternate-reality games, like the games used to uncover parts of The Dark Knight Rises and Halo.

                                                                Gamification outlined.

Adver-gaming, in my opinion, falls into the rising trend of “Gamification”. The concept revolves around rewarding people for conducting tasks in a leveling system. Basically the mechanics of a game applied to the real world. Where would find a future application, is in the workplace where corporations would reward loyal workers with incentives. It is clear this concept will take on eventually as it already is being implemented in the advertising world. 

As people’s experiences with media become interactive, so tool will their expectations of advertising. It makes sense to take something from the gaming world, which functions as a popular form of escape and implement it as a tool of business. Adver-gaming is the future.

THE HOLIDAYIZATION OF HALLOWEEN

                                                        Halloween costume courtesy of Mancouch.com

Of all the holidays, Halloween is my favourite. Actually it’s not, but it’s up there in some upper echelon of holidaydom. Actually considering the fact that summer holidays aren’t really marketed, save for pushing the alcohol cottage lifestyle ads, Halloween is the first real marketed holiday of latter half of the year.

                                                           Coors Light Summer ad circa 1992

                                                          How Summer is marketed towards you.

I look at holidays as a split group, you have the summer holidays which are pretty awesome but inherently don’t represent anything asides from patriotism, blowing part of the country up, and getting drunk. Fall and winter holidays, on the other hand, have some supernatural ascribed meaning which is facilitated through advertising and the pushing of products. 

Looking at Thanksgiving, the food industry, in a fairly low-key way, markets the shit out of food products (namely turkey) and the notions of family and homeliness. It’s an emotionally warm holiday.

Fast forwarding a bit, and out of chronological order I might add, Christmas is another warm holiday. We’re bombarded with images of Santa Claus and his reindeer landing on roofs and delivery toys and such. Products are sold under the guise of the big red guy accomplishing this task. It’s coupled, again, with the notion of family togetherness. Rumour has it Coke invented the modern red and white interpretation of Santa; the power of marketing at play…

But enough about these other holidays, we’re here to discuss – actually, I’m here to rant and you’re here to read there’s no two-way street in that department. Random narrative tangents aside, I’m surprised an apt marketer hasn’t fully grasped the potential of Halloween. I feel as though it is inevitably coming, and will emerge as another heavily marketed holiday. Think about it, you target the kids on getting food and random crap by going door-to-door. MORE IMPORTANTLY, you can target the adults getting drunk by offering new, seasonal ways to enjoy their drunkenness. 

Imagine Halloween inspired liquor: pumpkin spice vodka (or in my case, Whiskey), Ghostly orange beer, stuff like that.  It just seems like a great idea for an apt marketer to apply. Make Halloween earn from adults through specialized seasonal goods. 

Anyway as it stands my responsibilities, like a crested wave, have ended for this week – the peak has passed. As such, I plan on enjoying my Halloween weekend and remembering none of it… That is until I get the inevitable call invoking my designated driver responsibilities. I do hope to get out this year, especially after the derailed plans of last year – courtesy of a lass who systematically ended up ruining most things I did.

Cheers and have a Happy Halloween,
Potts.

IT’S LIKE I MIXED CHEF BOYARDEE AND HAMBURGER HELPER...

It arrived in a ceramic bowl, a crude assembly of red paste, flecks of some sort of meat substance, and what I suppose could be described as some type of noodle. With some anxiety and nervousness, my hands moved to the accompanying spoon with this so-called “meal” – hands shaking worse than my poor Parkinsons’ struck Grandfather. The thought of this being good had never crossed my mind. It was completely out of gastro-induced intrigue that I barged into this Tim Hortons and made this purchase.

                                                                                   (Tim Hortons' handout image)

I’d never figured Tim Hortons to be the place taking risks of this magnitude with their, admittedly shotty, hot food selections. When I think Tim Hortons I think coffee, line ups, Donuts, line ups; at certain point the line ups and drive-thru variants resemble a slaughter house cattle line, the creature being slowly processed to be killed or in this case serviced. This is the reason Sydenham road is backed up in the morning. I’ve never actually seen a cattle line or visited a slaughter house, or really know what I am talking about – does that make me a liar?

Regardless of my narrative reliability, I’d stumbled across Timmy Hoes’ new product purely through social networking. A friend managed to post on her status that she was enjoying a Tim Hortons’ Lasagna. At first I thought this was some new slang, or a term she had created (she’s clever, but not that clever).  So I immediately defaulted to thinking she’d purchased some form of drugs. I attribute this assumption to watching the Wire too much, which isn’t a bad thing. Moving forward, my interest, while initially discarding her “Tim Hortons’ Lasagna” post, began to peak as I saw other friends talking about it.

“TO GOOGLE!” I yelled. (I actually didn’t).

I looked up Tim Hortons’ Lasagna to see if these outrageous claims had any merit. Five minutes later (I have dial-up) it became evident that this thing did exist. What became more evident were the marketing implications raised by such a stupid story. The blogosphere and actual Canadian news sources were covering this in spades.

Taking a step back from the whole thing, and gazing on it with marketing in mind, one could see the genius behind it. What Tim Hortons did was just a smaller scale version of KFC’s Double Down campaign. Create a product so outrageous and give an initial push in marketing. The outrageousness will spiral out as interest spikes. People will talk about the product. The media will cover the product. And what you get is a form of self-sustaining free advertising. As Kip and Kathy covered in their respective classes, launching a new product is often a very daunting and expensive task that can often fail if the wrong advertising means are implemented. In the case of Tim’s Lasagna, they managed to garner mass amounts of free advertising courtesy of people’s social media updates, and the CBC.

                                                                                       (image from: Palsys.net)

With this understanding, I now realize this blog just spoke of this product. In talking of it, and describing it from an anecdote, I just redirected Tim Hortons’ message of “NEW PRODUCT. NEED ATTENTION. LOOK HERE”. Now the main question is how did it taste?

To be honest, I never entered Tim Hortons; I never purchased Lasagna there; my hands never shook with anticipation about the product. This is all because I never fell into the marketing trap Tim Hortons had presented before me. Now if they served some form of alcohol, it would be an entirely different story…

Maybe… 

                                                                 Banned from Tim Hortons.

BACK IN THE KINGSTON GROOVE

There was something pure about up-and-leaving a place. A renegade action if there ever was one. Taking the wheel and driving off to some new location and life. It seemed like the ultimate plan B should anything go awry – break glass in case of emergency. I’d ditched Ottawa and the last 3.5 years of my life as a university student in an instant. No hesitation. I was Kingston bound. 

Entering college, a 23 year-old first year, with a few years of university under my belt, was going to be an interesting experience. The immediate anticipation and fear was that I’d be the oldest person in the room. A glance around the room during orientation day only added fuel to the fire. There was an “oh god…” moment that crossed my mind as I saw the young faces. 

As orientation day pressed on, fancy terminology for “an hour later…”, my fears were immediately quenched as I met fellow students in section 101. We were all in the same 18-25 demographic as Kip, and actually every instructor, would explain. The numbers 18-25 were hammered on us on a seemingly daily basis that still continues to this day.

It was a good thing. I think.

Blogging was something I’d never fully considered in the grand scheme of advertising. To be honest, I’d grouped it with the Twitter-addicted cell phone tweakers, people who come to look like meth addicts from the constant refreshing of their twitter feeds and speed-freak button mashing of their mobile devices. It seemed like a superfluous engagement. 

I was wrong. I think.  As classes rolled on it became increasingly apparent that blogging, Twitter, and mobile technology all served important parts in the machinery of advertising. As such I’ll push one of my videos in this blog post – nothing like shameless self advertising, right?  Whatever, I still hate Twitter.

College itself was a brand new experience. Kingston, on the other hand, was not. It was, however, my homeland. I always enjoyed Kingston living. I recall an awkward realization in the car ride home with my brother from St. Larry’s, it hadn’t fully dawned on me that Kingston was once again my home until we passed by the Cineplex, a common site of congregation amongst my peers in the summer. I was back baby! Kingston is my home again. 

                                                           A video project I did this summer.