FREE SUMMARY OF MY BOOK AVAILABLE!

Finally after three months of updating my book it is currently being translated into English! Hooray!

The title will be: A Brand New Playground - Building Brands in the Digital Era

As I wanted to share the contents in an early stage please feel free to download and share the free summary (demo). You can find it HERE.

The main topic of the book is how games can be used to achieve marketing objectives in the digital era.

The first chapter basically describes the different platforms, genres and provides a historical overview of games throughout the past.
The second chapter describes the consumers that play games. Ten years ago it was merely kids and teenagers playing games, but the past five years we have seen that mothers and elderly are playing online games more and more.
The third chapter reveals a lot of cases that support objectives within the marketingmix, on product-, price-, place, personnel and promotional matters.
The fourth and final chapter reveals how games can be put to use within the field of Brand Management and Marketing on a theoretical level. I have developed three models that help agencies, organizations and brands to develop concepts that build bridges between them and the target audience.

Amongst them are the Branding Checklist, The Brand Play model and the CoCha-model (gotcha!).


Have fun reading it, share the pdf with friends and collegues and tweet your feedback to:

@BartHufen or #BrandNewPlayground



Please feel free to join my community on Linkedin called BrandNewGame


Bart

Sony confirms a new handheld PlayStation with touchscreen and 3G

Sony Computer Entertainment just confirmed that it is developing a new PlayStation Portable with touch-screen and 3G network capabilities.

The current name for the device is NGP (Next Generation Portable), but it will be likely to change towards the releasedate end of this year.

Check www.playstation.com/psmeeting2011 for some images of the product. Surprisingly, the design is fairly comparable to the current PlayStation Portable design, but it will have a lot of new functions and amazing technical specifications.

Amongst them are a 16 million color OLED multi touch screen, front and rear camera, dual analog sticks, build in GPS and three-axis compass.

Presenting during Trendsfactory March 24th 2011 - De Parade 's-Hertogenbosch

I am really honored to speak during Trendsfactory 2011 next to people like Stephen Fellinger (Spin Awards), Martijn Aslander (Lifehacking) and the crazy Cor Molenaar (Shopping 3.0) and many others.

I recommend all Dutch internet marketeers to subscribe to this event NOW as we will present the future of internet, social media and using games as a marketing tool. We will present the future of your marketingmix related to product, price, place (innovative distribution), people (training) and promotion (marketingcommunication).

To read more information about the event or to subscribe, check this link:

http://www.trendsfactory.nl/

SmartGate-The Game JUST WENT LIVE!

When I started writing the Dutch version of my book ‘A Brand New Playground’ (Laat met je merk spelen) and thought about how games could be used to achieve marketing objectives, the last thing I thought I would come across is the development of a game to support change management issues. Ironically this example was one of the first projects I was involved in when I founded my company BrandNewGame. Air Cargo Netherlands, Schiphol airport and the Dutch Customs approached IJsfontein (a Dutch gamedeveloper) to develop a game that would help them to improve cooperation between the parties in the logistic chain. I was personally involved as an advisor. Together with the client (Air Cargo Netherlands) we defined the overall goal for this project and game-specific goals.

The overall goal was for Schiphol airport to keep its international competitive position as a freightway to Europe.

To maintain this competitive position, Schiphol (and all parties in the logistic chain) needed to speed up the logistics process from intake to delivery. The overall workflow concept to increase efficiency, reliability and security was called SmartGate and involves e-freight, a series of licences and one Information System for all parties in the chain.

The three goals for the game where:

- Increase awareness for SmartGate

- Give insight in the logistic process

- Internalize the new working method

After a thorough analyses we came up with three game concepts that should gradually grow from easy and fun towards a more serious and intense gameplay. IJsfontein embraced this concept and successfully developed the games.

I don’t want to give away too much of how the game looks, but basically you see an airport which you have to manage from a ‘helicopter-view perspective’ with all parties involved in the logistic chain. In the first game you can only ship goods (red and green) from shipper to handler to – eventually – load airplanes and increase your score. Red cargo (and red trucks) means that something is wrong. Either the information about this shipment has not been delivered in time, information on the airway bill might be illegible, information might be missing etc. The variables that influence the red or green status of cargo will be more detailed in the next games. The goal in the first game is to fly out as many planes as you can, (loaded from top to bottom to increase efficiency) and to keep your warehouses as empty as possible (Just In Time management).

We started this project early 2010 and the first game is almost finished now. Starting the 6^th of January 2011 the game will be playable through www.smartgatethegame.nl and I’m really looking forward to the response.

This is just an example to illustrate how games can help to achieve marketing objectives, in this case even support change management issues within a branch.

‘A Brand New Playground’ will show you how games can be used as a marketing tool and how to build brands in the digital era. We are talking about the era in which people have transformed from passive consumers to participating players.

This is an impression of the room and the crowd!

And me ... ;-)

A Mobile update: Phones versus Pads versus Computers - Globally

Internet Trends Presentation -

Read the full article and response at Mashable