Posts in Entertainment & Leisure
Growing U.S. Mobile Gaming Revenue Upside
Casual gaming has driven the adoption of mobile games to more than a quarter of mobile phone subscribers and more than one in five members of the U.S. population, according to the latest eMarketer estimates.
This year, 64 million people will play mobile games at least monthly, a number that will rise to 94.9 million by 2014. eMarketer's estimates exclude mobile users who play pre-installed games, which offer publishers decent brand exposure but little in the way of monetization opportunities.
While games are currently popular on both smartphones and feature phones, the composition of the mobile gaming audience will shift further toward smartphones as they increase in penetration across the population. More...
Lollapalooza in sign language
I was absolutely fascinated with the live sign language interpreters who were rocking to some of the more popular bands. They were stage right on a platform so that the people in a special section on the left side of the audience way up front could see both the interpreters and the band. And the section was right in front of a set of massive sub-woofers so those in the special section could feel the music. More...
Video documentaries as brand journalism
Brian Halligan and I recently finished out "follow the band book tour" to launch our new book Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History.
I created this mini-documentary to illustrate how the Dead freed their music, cultivated a relationship with fans, and built a social network before Mark Zuckerberg was even born. Near the end of the video, Brian and I discuss how every business can use these ideas. Direct link to the HD video on Vimeo.
More...Moshi Monsters tops social game charts according to Speed kids

The results are in for the Speed kids’ review of social gaming platforms targeted at children. Moshi Monsters is the clear winner beating Club Penguin and Our World.
Today is bring your kids to work day at Speed; follow #speedkids on Twitter for updates.
We asked four of our offspring aged 10 to 13 years old to rate sites for game play, interest and engagement. Granted, their criteria do not stand up to much ‘professional’ scrutiny.
Freya and Tom (both aged 10) and Ellie (aged 11) gave Moshi Monsters top marks. They all plan to play the game again and recommend it to their friends. More...
What can YOUR business learn from the Grateful Dead?
I’ll temper my Grateful Dead obsession and get back to writing about varied marketing and PR ideas starting next week… Thanks for indulging me with this series of Grateful Dead posts for the past few weeks.
If you’re completely fed up with all this Grateful Dead stuff, you MUST read this article by Terence Blacker in The Independent (UK): Time to herald the wisdom of chickens
Book tour update
This weekend, we were at Gathering of the Vibes for four days where we caught 60 bands, partied a bit, enjoyed backstage passes, met band members, watched the sets from the photo pit (in front of the stage) and signed some books. More...
Engaging with Mad Men’s Don Draper ahead of Series 4 launch tonight; but UK fans will need to wait
There’s not a lot that a 50-year old creative agency could teach about social media you’d have thought. But you’d be wrong.
Characters from the show have been tweeting in the run up to the launch of the new series. Its a delightful social media execution that is completely on-message for Mad Men.
Here are a couple of tweets that I’ve exchanged with the show’s Don Draper and Peggy Olson.

Unfortunately the show’s promotional strategy doesn’t extend to its digital rights management. More...
Video Usage May Drive U.S. Broadband Revolt
eMarketer reports that while most mainstream U.S. consumers may not care much about the broadband access speed that they have at home, they are very interested in continuing to gain access to the vast array of video content that's readily available to them via the public Internet.
The number of online video viewers continues to grow, while the number of videos viewed skyrockets. Nearly 183 million U.S. internet users watched an average of 186 videos per viewer during the month of May, for a total of 34 billion videos, according to comScore.
U.S. households are also becoming more networked, as consumers buy more and more internet-enabled consumer electronics (CE) devices. More...
What Celebrities Can Learn From Dannii Minogue
Can't say I ever thought I'd write a post like this, but here you go...
In one fell swoop, Dannii Minogue - sister of singing star Kylie and a recording and TV personality in her own right - has managed to change public perceptions of her 'brand'.
Unless you've been living in a cave, you'd know that Dannii and boyfriend Kris Smith have just had a child, a little boy named Ethan.
Now, Dannii has always been a bit of a publicity junkie and is no stranger to the tabloid press or women's glossies.
We quite rightly could have expected her to do what most other celebrities seem to do after giving birth - keep the bub under wraps before emerging several weeks later in some lowbrow glossy rag.
The story would be an exclusive, of course, complete with airbrushed photos of the couple gushing about the new addition to their family.
Often, money has changed hands. More...
1.9 Billion Installed CE Devices in U.S. by 2013
Year-over-year shipment growth will be 231 percent between 2010 and 2011 -- resulting in a doubling of the U.S. installed base of units for 3D TVs from 2010 to 2011.
"High definition (HD) did create a wave of activity in the U.S. market, not seen since the introduction of color," says Stephanie Ethier, In-Stat analyst. "3DTV promises to be the next significant innovation wave for living room entertainment."
Despite many bright spots in the U.S. More...
Tech in the Park: Making Clever Use of Teens’ Love of Music

Wondering what this is? It’s a rather clever contraption, apparently installed by Monster Play, a Hertfordshire-based company.
Built into the rain/sun shelter that sits on the edge of a new local skate park, this unit allows you to broadcast music to a small speaker from your phone, mp3 player, laptop, etc via Bluetooth. More...







