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Guest Post: 8 Video Game Marketing Commercials You’ll Never Forget

Video game marketing covers a wide variety of media. From magazines and other printed media to TV commercials and gigantic murals, video games are actually all over. Now, this article will celebrate the best commercials for video games.

Take note, the title says ‘commercials’. It means it has to be aired on the television to be part of this list. The Dead Island trailer, no matter how well-crafted it is, is a trailer. Thus it won’t be featured in this list.

PS3 – Michael

A commercial in memory of a deceased gamer, it takes all of the most popular PlayStation game characters in one epic commercial. Nathan Drake talks to FFXIII’s Lightning, while Assassin’s Creed’s Ezio and MGS’s Old Snake lurk in their respective corners. It’s just such a fitting tribute to a gamer who tragically lost his life too young. What’s even better is that they got the characters’ voice actors/actresses to play their characters in this commercial!

Gears of War – Mad World

Haunting visuals accompanied by haunting music, this commercial definitely sets the tone of the game. It doesn’t really represent the gameplay, but it does showcase the game’s gritty atmosphere very well. The ad shows the protagonist traveling through a ruined city trying to escape whatever threats that are hunting him. The commercial sealed the song’s link to the game. Now, gamers can’t listen to the song without thinking of the game.

Super Smash Bros – Happy Together

The first ever Super Smash Bros game on the Nintendo 64 had this amazing commercial. It starts out with the classic Nintendo characters Mario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Pikachu all happily frolicking through a field of flowers. All of a sudden, Mario trips Yoshi and it turns into an all-out brawl. Thus begins a popular franchise that now spans consoles and multiple games.

Halo 3 – Believe

A camera pans through a diorama of marines fighting (and losing to?) the Covenant. Everything is still and silent, showing various scenes and faces. That is until it pans to Master Chief’s plasma grenade, and he looks up. It has to be seen to be believed.

Ratchet and Clank – Weapons Testing

A group of teenagers somehow got real-life (not really) weapons from the Ratchet & Clank games. They try the weapons out, resulting in hilarious (and dangerous) situations. From accidentally turning their friend into a chicken to setting a tree on fire, the commercial sure does its job of making people want to play the game.

Mortal Kombat – Mortal Monday

Mortal Kombat’s four versions were released simultaneously, and the date was henceforth dubbed “Mortal Monday”. The release was announced by a slew of TV commercials. A young man shouts “MORTAL MONDAY” interspersed with shots of people running and converging on a crossroad. The crown then watches scenes from the game like they’re watching a rock concert.

Battlefield Bad Company

Another series of ads this time poking fun at or parodying other video games or their ads. One takes a jab at the Gears of War “Mad World” commercial, and another took a shot at MGS’s silly camouflage techniques. They’re funny and worth a watch. Unfortunately, there’s only three of them.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 – ‘Infomercial’

Parodying the infomercials that were popular then, the commercial for Sonic the Hedgehog 2 said the game is able to clean stains, cover bald spots, and chop and dice vegetables. Of course, it can’t, though the sheer outrageousness of the claims is good for a laugh.

Honorable Mentions

The Last of Us – Could You Be the Last of Us?

A mysterious, cryptic narration over an actor’s gradual transformation into Joel, the game’s protagonist. The background and surroundings also decay over the course of the commercial. Then, as the narrator asks one last question, the game’s title is revealed. More than that, the commercial captures the game’s tone and atmosphere. What’s not to like about this commercial?

WoW – “What’s Your Game?” Series of Commercials

These commercials featured popular celebrities such as Ozzy Osbourne, Chuck Norris, and Mr. T. They are reimagined as World of Warcraft characters and at the end, they all ask, “What’s your game?”. It becomes memorable because could you imagine Chuck Norris (or the other celebrities) grinding WoW gold or playing in general otherwise?

And those are the video game commercials you’ll never forget. Enjoy gaming!

 

Daisy is an SEO | Outreach Content Marketing Specialist, from the Philippines who’s been playing video games since 2006. When I am not working at Playerauctions, I love to read, getting out(hiking, backpacking, and camping)…but unfortunately, I love to spend too much time behind a computer than spending time with friends.

 

Guest Post: 4 Contributing Factors That Create an Impactful Company Culture

The culture of your company is what helps to set the tone and direction of your business. Sometimes the hardest thing to change about any business is the culture. It’s one of those things that you can’t always start from scratch on unless everyone is on board.

If your company is reevaluating your culture or if you’re starting a new business and want to take such matters into consideration, consider these four factors of what will make your company’s culture impactful.

Think of Your Employees as Individuals

Your workforce and how they interact with each other plays a significant part in the development of your culture. To encourage positive interaction, see your employees as individuals—people with real-world issues and different backgrounds. They are not just dispensable robot-like creatures who show up every day for your corporate gain. No, they have needs.

One need is to be happy and comfortable where they’re at. You can encourage such sentiments in the workplace by encouraging a compassionate environment with leaders who are understanding and willing to work with individuals.

Improve Your Creative Vibe

Surround your employees with items that are designed to stimulate their creativity. This could be bright colors on the walls or adding in office plants. You could even have unique signs or features made from acrylic, such as perspex, that show off your company’s brand and further define the type of culture your company needs.

You may also want to look at examples of companies like Google and Amazon that make culture a huge part of the working experience—providing a work hard/play hard type of environment with their creative spaces and awesome perks.

Offer Growth Opportunities

If your employees feel stuck in their positions with nowhere else to go in your company, then it’s time to evaluate your business model. Maintaining loyal employees is not only great for company morale but it is financially beneficial as well. You can provide more growth opportunities by creating new positions and/or teams.

You can also encourage cross-training so individuals feel more capable of applying for positions on other teams. Another thing that you can do is to have your recruiter sit down with employees who feel stuck and counsel them on how to get to a higher position.

Work Towards Transparency

One of the biggest impacts to any business is the perception that employs have about the company. Creating transparency is more than just having an open door policy. It includes things like posting the salary ranges for any given job title or creating a measurement tool for rating overall performance.

One way to create transparency is to have Q&A sessions where employees are free to ask the company’s executives questions and where they can also be informed on important changes, whether or not the company is doing well, and other such matters that employees are often concerned about.

It can be a huge challenge to get the culture you want your company to have. It’s not going to happen overnight. In fact, it can take years. Little by little, however, you will get there.

 

 

Hannah Whittenly is a freelance writer and mother of two from Sacramento, CA. She enjoys kayaking and reading books by the lake..

Guest Post: Best Practices for Guest Posting

Guest posting is here to stay in the world of digital marketing, at least in the foreseeable future! And, why not? Almost every marketer agrees that guest posting offers fantastic benefits. You gain extra views, increased domain authority (DA), and cultivate backlinks. However, if you’re struggling to place those guest posts, you might need to consider if you’re following best practices for guest posting.

Why Have Best Practices?

All guest posts, regardless of subject matter, rely on a key element to success. You must have a host blog accept your guest post. However, it’s becoming more and more challenging to find placements for guest posts. This is because bloggers are besieged by large number of guest post inquiries every day. They’ve received some really bad posts and some really great ones. But, at the end of the day, they just don’t want to deal with the work that accepting guest posts entails.

Therefore, more sites have taken down their “Guest Post” pages or added administration fees to weed out the bad contributors from the good one.

Following best practices will give the host blogger a good impression of you, the company you represent, and guest posters in general. This may keep that blogger open to accepting future contributions from you in the future—even if they shut down to other digital marketers.

Best Practices for Guest Posting

Do Your Homework First

Before you wing out an email to a blogger, do your homework. Visit the blog. Look at their content. Ascertain if your content is a good match for their site. Is it relevant? Additionally, look at it from your client’s perspective to determine if this is a website from which they want a backlink. If you have a client with high editorial standards, he might not appreciate backlinks from a spammy website.

Respect the Guidelines

As you’re visiting the blog, look into their guidelines for guest posting. Make note of their word count requirements, photo requirements, and backlink standards. First, you will need this information to craft an introductory email to the blogger. Second, you’ll need to respect the guidelines when you write the guest post.

Write an Actionable Introductory Email

When you reach out to the blogger, write an actionable introductory email. This will show a level of professionalism to the blogger that they really don’t see very often. They will respect your effort and look kindlier at allowing you to contribute to their site. You would be surprised at how many long, rambling emails they receive.

Your introductory email should be about 3 short paragraphs (2-3 sentences each) and include the following:

  • An introduction to you and your company (or client)
  • Why you love their blog and wish to contribute
  • Acknowledge that you read their guidelines (if they have them published on their site)
  • Offer them a topic for consideration
  • Ask them for a response indicating their level of interest

Those last two points are actionable. This should elicit a response from the blogger. Obviously, you want a “yes,” response; however, a “no” is much better than being left hanging.

Create Great Content

Some bloggers I know grumble about sending some of their best work off as guest posts instead of using it on their own websites. Higher quality host sites have strict editorial standards. They do this to keep spammers at arm’s length. Don’t be one of those people whose work they delete!

Make sure the content contains relevant and current information, double-check your facts, include great resources, and make it shareable. Low-quality content will probably get deleted.

Edit your Final Product

Before you send off your guest post masterpiece, give it a good and thorough editing. You probably wrote it in MS Word or Google Docs. However, these miss errors more often than you’d think. Give it a final review in Grammarly, which catches errors often missed by your word processor.

While host blogs reserve the final editorial privileges, they are not your editor. It’s your responsibility to submit error-free content.

Include Supporting Documents

Remember those guest post guidelines? They probably gave you directions on what photo size and file type they require. In addition, they may instruct you to send a head shot, author bio, or social media links.

Be sure to review that and send these to the blogger alongside your completed guest blog. Literally, you are not giving the blogger any reason to reject—or ignore—your content.

Get Social!

When you submit your content, also offer to “get social.” You can use whatever wording you want, but an offer to share on your social media is a strategic move.

First, it’s a gentle way to ask when the blogger will publish your content. If I have established a good rapport and the blogger is friendly, I usually try to say something cute, “If you can tell me the scheduled publication date, I’ll channel my social media genie on that same day.”  If the blogger is all business, I tone that down to professional language.

Second, if a week or so passes and you’ve had no response, it gives you a reason to check back that sounds like you’re trying to help the blogger reach a wider audience. A nice reminder email saying, “I wanted to make sure that our social media manager doesn’t miss syncing up with my guest post.” 

Thank You Email

After the blogger publishes your guest post, fire off a quick two sentence thank you email. “Thanks for allowing me to contribute a guest post. It looks great!” That’s sufficient. Again, it shows that you’re a professional marketer and places you at a higher standard than the spammy companies who give guest posting a bad rap.

Final Thoughts

If you are lucky enough to find a host who will allow you a backlink to your own page in the body of the email, make sure that your website (or client’s website) is ready! Be sure that users who are interested can contact you for information or subscribe to your own blog. While the backlink might be the primary reason you are guest posting, don’t waste that traffic surge!

 

 Deborah Tayloe is a freelance writer and regular contributor for EmailMeForm. In addition to writing, she has firsthand experience in blogger outreach. Deborah resides in North Carolina with her husband and an energetic toy fox terrier.

2nd Brain Collective Podcast – Kate Snyder of Piper and Gold Public Relations

Kate has spent her career focusing on telling stories to help companies and organizations reach their strategic goals.

Now principal strategist and owner of Piper & Gold Public Relations, Kate works with clients ranging from Michigan State University to entrepreneurial start-ups helping them tell their stories. She specializes in incorporating digital media into traditional public relations practices. In addition to teaching advertising, digital media, public relations and consumer behavior at Michigan State University, Lansing Community College and Sienna Heights University, she has spoken at conferences around the country on the importance of strategy in social media, building community relations programs and approaching media relations with a customer service attitude. Her background in leadership and coalition building have honed her collaborative approach to problem solving and her background in strategy work helps her to understand clients’ needs as she represents them in the community.

For nearly eight years, Kate served as chief communications officer at Capital Area Michigan Works!, a $20+ million government workforce development agency, where she received local and regional recognition in crisis communications for the 2005 collapse of Capital Area Michigan Works!’ Lansing Service Center. While there, she built an award-winning communications program ranging from local public relations to national legislative advocacy. During her tenure as CCO, she worked with U.S. News and World Report, USA Today, National Public Radio, CNN, the New York Times and international media outlets from France, Japan and Denmark.

In 2005, Kate was the youngest professional in the nation to receive the prestigious Accreditation in Public Relations from the Universal Accreditation Board. In 2010, she was named by Greater Lansing Woman as one of the 10 most influential women on Twitter. In 2012, she was recognized by the Lansing Regional Chamber and Grand River Connection as one of its, “10 Over the Next Ten: The Next Generation of Business Leaders.”

Kate currently serves as a national assembly delegate of the Central Michigan Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America and is a past president. She also sits on the boards of Capital Region Community Foundation and Impression 5 Science Center. She is the chair of the NextGen@Wharton Steering Committee for the Wharton Center for Performing Arts, where she also sits on the center’s Advisory Council. In 2009, she helped to incorporate the education-focused nonprofit Keep Learning… Our Future Depends On It, with which she is still engaged.

Kate holds a Master of Science in integrated marketing communications from Eastern Michigan University. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary humanities from Michigan State University, where she also teaches Writing for PR.

Learn more about Kate Snyder and Piper & Gold:

Guest Post: 7 Exercises You Can Do Right In Your Chair!

Sitting down the whole day at your desk can pose a huge health risk. You may suffer from heart attack or diabetes to name a few if you continue to do this. Enzymes that reduce fat, insulin effectiveness, and metabolism rate will all go down as you start to sit on your chair, and will lower as the hours of sitting extend.

No matter how busy you are it’s a must that you do some stretching and exercise to prevent these health risks. There are simple steps that you can take that will not require you to leave your workspace. They are also convenient as they can be done every hour or two, without eating much of your precious time at work.

Even if you are regularly going to the gym, you should still do these exercises to avoid the health problems mentioned. Stretching your hands and legs while on your seat is one way to do this. Hold your stretch for a few seconds and repeat for a few times.

You may also stand up and stretch your legs by placing one on top of your desk, while standing on the other one. Hold the stretch for a few moments before doing this on the other foot. There are more easy to do exercises that you can try while working in your office and we compiled them in our infographic.

Get ready to become healthier even while busy working through our fantastic graphics below:

7 Exercises You Can Do Right In Your Chair!

Scott has been blogging and managing websites for several years now. He developed a multitude of strategies and methods to streamline his content production allowing him to do more in much less time and free up his schedule to better enjoy life.

 

3 Ways to Extend the Life of Your Video

When you create a video, you are trying to get people to hear and see your story. But with the many different platforms out there attention is diverted away from the initial post. However, your video is just one piece of content that can be used in different ways on different platforms. Here are three things that you can do to extend the life of that video so it isn’t completely lost in the shuffle.

  1. Thumbnails/Stills. You really should have a dynamic still that helps represent what your video is about. So, take a still and add graphics to it, and use that to illustrate the story of the video. We like to use a program like Canva or Pixelmator to create our
    video thumbnails. YouTube, Facebook and Vimeo all recommend and have options to upload thumbnails. The biggest thing with this, is it’s also a picture so you can make it a stand alone Facebook post, tweet or Instagram post as well.
    2. Teasers. With video grabbing more and more attention, length of the video becomes more crucial. I wrote about length of video in my post last week. Not only that there are some social media platforms that have limitations on the length as it is. For instance, Twitter and Instagram have 60 second limitations and the Facebook ad platform has limitations on time as well. In this scenario, if your video is slightly longer than the time limitations of the platform, than creating a “teaser” or “trailer” of the main video with a link to it, would be helpful. We use those terms that apply to shorter clips of films that you see to get you interested in it. The same philosophy applies here. It’s just trying to stimulate interest in the longer content. You can also make several and publish o
    n the various platforms I just mentioned.
    3. GIFS. This is one we have fun with. GIFS are big, visually interesting and very popular. So, similar to thumbnails, you can take a section of your video and publish it to GIF friendly accounts. For instance, Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr. We like to use GIF Brewery to create our GIFS, and we use GIPHY to host them. Like I mentioned they are really eye-catching and popular to use in messaging apps as well.
    These three ways we use regularly for our clients and for our own promotion of the work we do. They will definitely help you promote and bring attention to the video you worked so hard to create and your very important story won’t get lost in the shuffle.

Paul J Schmidt is owner/production director of UnoDeuce Multimedia, a full service video production company based in Lansing, Michigan that specializes in creative visual storytelling for small businesses and non-profit organizations. You can connect with them at www.unodeuce.com

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Contact UnoDeuce Multimedia


Uno Deuce Multimedia
123 E. Kalamazoo Street
Lansing, MI 48933

Phone: (517) 292-0095
Email: info@UnoDeuce.com

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