Gaming: The next big thing in social media and digital marketing?

(c)iStock.com/Wachiwit 

In a world long ago, I designed or assisted in the design of a series of conflict simulation board games—mostly complex, very realistic war games, long before online games were common.

I was very observant, understanding the gamers’ demographics, their needs, habits, desires, the history of the game, and maintaining the needed, correct, realistic history of the event portrayed. 

In the back of my mind, I was always thinking...

22 July 2016 | Gamification

Premier League throws up new marketing opportunities – but they need to act now

Next season, the club finishing bottom in the Premier League will earn a guaranteed £100m in revenue.

Think about that for a moment. £100m.

What a massive opportunity that represents for every football club in the UK’s top-tier to consolidate their commercial offerings and for marketers in this space.

Clubs now need to start looking to the future by dedicating time and resource to build better links with their most important stakeholders: fans and...

29 June 2016 | Gamification

Lithium partners with Zuora for new online customer community

(c)iStock.com/portishead1

Following three months in soft launch Lithium Technologies has announced that it has created an online community for Zuora, a provider of subscription billing, commerce and finance solutions.

The online community, which launched in January, allows more than 700 subscription businesses that use Zuora peer-to-peer support as well as access to Zuora employees and partners in order to receive answers to questions. They are also able to provide direct...

15 April 2016 | Customer Experience

Zizzi embraces gamification for latest branding initiative

(c)iStock.com/DavidCallan

Italian restaurant chain Zizzi has embraced the concept of gamification for the second year running to deliver a new loyalty and promotional campaign that allowed customers to compete for food and holiday prizes and the chain to radically increase its marketing database. The campaign attracted 22,000 new customer names to the brand.

Zizzi ran an eight-week online board game promotion in association with 3radical Voco, which users could access through a...

14 April 2016 | Branding

How beacons combines experiential and engaging marketing to be a win-win for brands

(c)iStock.com/olaser

Beacons present a unique, cheap and simple way to identify a consumer is in a location at a point in time.  This allows promotions and incentives to be targeted not only on customer segment but on location, time and inventory. 

With connected devices becoming increasingly sophisticated, and consumers becoming more empowered, brands must consider how they are going to evolve their promotions and incentives schemes; and include the use of beacon...

25 September 2015 | Advertising Technology

Manchester United and HCL Technologies partner for digital transformation

Picture credit: MarketingTech

Manchester United has announced a 'digital transformation' partnership with HCL Technologies to analyse and enhance the relationship with the club's 650 million strong global fanbase.

The two organisations will create a United Xperience innovation lab, housed within United's Old Trafford stadium, which will essentially become an incubation pod for creating a unified fan experience and increasing engagement through building digital...

3 September 2015 | Data-driven marketing

The evolution of social commerce

(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/Rawpixel)

 ‘Commerce’ before it was ‘social’?

If you can remember the first retail websites in the mid ‘90s they were pretty boring, nothing more than online versions of printed brochures that took ages to download on your dial-up modem. It wasn’t until companies like Pegasus, eBay and Amazon identified the potential of ecommerce to disintermediate traditional retail, that shopping was forever changed. But that was...

20 March 2015 | Commerce

Multi-device marketing’s reach moves to embrace wearable users

Advertisers can now tap into the growing market for wearable technology using FitAd, a recently launched wearable advertising platform for fitness and health-oriented brands and publishers.

Engagement on mobile health software is higher than almost all other categories of apps, making it a market ripe for advertisers. Nielsen’s own evidence points to 46 million users of apps averaging 16 uses each month for a period totalling one hour per engagement.

New York-based...

17 December 2014 | Advertising

Microsoft tries to gain back Windows 8 ad trust with Ad Pano

Nearly two months ago I’d written an article on our sister site DeveloperTech how Windows 8 developers were not being paid for their in-app advertisements, and how it was affecting their finances. Now Microsoft could be trying to restore trust and rival Apple’s “iAds” with Ad Pano.

The platform which enables this new interactive advertising is even reminiscent of the iAd platform, but available on any screen where Windows 8 is installed.

Availability...

24 June 2013 | Advertising

Microsoft rewarding users for watching TV? Count me in!

From Microsoft’s initial introduction of the Xbox 360, the team wished to be the “360 [degree] entertainment hub for your home.”

This vision far succeeded where others fell short; taking a vast library of content services and mixing them with incredible games.

Alongside this version of the best-selling console came an “achievements” feature, the undisputed way of bragging to friends of your accomplishments and spurring them to do...

13 June 2013 | Advertising