Do you wish that you could get anyone to do whatever you want? You can. You can get anyone to do whatever you want as long as you give them something of great value at no expense to them. Free is a powerful word, a magical idea.

LinkedIn users invest heavily in the success of LinkedIn. They view and respond to ads, buy premium services, maintain profiles, answer questions, promote LinkedIn on business cards and in e-mail messages, and invite colleagues to make LinkedIn a part of their professional lives. In return, users get a platform for self-promotion, job hunting, recruiting, networking, and staying connected with colleagues.

Applications, or what you might call widgets, were recently introduced. These widgets include Reading List by Amazon, which allows users to share what books they’re reading and what books they’ve read. They can even recommend books to other professionals! Sounds great, right? All this for free? Well, the catch is that every recommendation is linked to the Amazon.com online store — and LinkedIn appends a referral code to every link. LinkedIn receives a cut of every sale made on the basis of user recommendations.

Remember what I said about free? Nobody even blinks. No double takes either. In fact, users even believe they owe LinkedIn for providing them something of great value with no price tag attached. This behavior can be related to the finding that generosity, even if only perceived as such, breeds both guilt and motivation to buy out of responsibility, or a sense of duty to pay back a favor. “Oh, sure! Go ahead! You’re welcome to profit from my work, my network, and my influence as long as I don’t have to pay $19.95 per month.”

Appearances are deceiving. Simply because there’s no price does not mean that there’s no cost. But who am I kidding? Although I know the game and although I’m familiar with the tactics, I can’t say that I’ve never subscribed to a dozen free magazines I’ll never read…

Guy Kawasaki, the entrepreneurial humorist, recently spent 26 hours aboard the USS John C. Stennis. While his post contains “over 130 posts and 5 videos” — and I highly recommend you read the entire thing, too — one of the comments on the article struck me as, well, odd.

It would be very easy for this thread to rip the military, because Guy’s readers most likely … [a]re technology and marketing gurus, and not really into guns, loud noises, nuke power, Ducatis, weapons systems, and Republicans.

First, what are guns, Ducatis, and weapon systems? Technologies. What produces loud noises and nuclear power? Technology. Who spends a lot of money on these technologies? Republicans.

Second, I’d say that most marketers, regardless of whether they’re gurus, are attracted to guns, loud noises, nuclear power, Ducatis, weapons systems, and… become Republicans whenever their clients need them to be. Just like mercenaries. Why?

• We compare customers to targets, methods to tactics, tools to weapons, and campaigns to, well, campaigns.
• We aim to crush, kill, or eliminate the competition.
• We liken ourselves to Rambo-like heroes fighting the good fight with guerilla marketing.
• We even liken ourselves to revolutionaries who use whatever means necessary with viral marketing.

Marketers are clearly obsessed with battle and war, but you can’t really blame us: we’re bastards.

When I was a wee lad in elementary school, the administrator called my parents for a meeting. The administrator warned them about my reading habit. She said I was reading too much and not doing enough socializing. You know you’re doing something right when educators think ill of your activities. I remember my parents telling of their laughter when the administrator complained of this to them.

The number of books on my bookshelves are plenty. All my books are nonfiction, and most of the books I read are related in some way to marketing. Recently, I came across a link on GameDev.net to a free book on video game marketing titled Videogame Marketing & PR.

I sent an e-mail to the author Scott Steinberg to request my free copy. Turns out that Scott is the Managing Director at Embassy Multimedia Consultants, which recently set up shop in August 2006. While I’m promised a free copy of the book, I did check out the excerpts that were released here and here. Overall, I’d say the content looks good thus far, but I would really like to see the table of contents.

Another book, The Indie Developer’s Guide to Selling Games, was authored by Joseph Lieberman who was until recently the owner of Video Game Marketing, Smart! I learned about this book from his announcement on the International Game Developers Association discussion board. Unfortunately, there’s no offer of a free copy, so there’s not much to say.

Those are the only two books of which I’m aware that are dedicated to marketing video games.

Brian “Psychochild” Green of Meridian 59 fame was the editor of Business and Legal Primer for Game Development. Sony Online Entertainment’s community relations manager Craig “Grimwell” Dalrymple had an advance copy with him when I picked him up from the airport in December. I browsed the marketing and public relations sections, but honestly, I was not impressed. I’m sure the rest of the book is solid though, given that Matthew “CmdrSlack” Hector had a hand in writing the legal section!

If you’re interested in interactive entertainment marketing, I recommend picking up all three of these books. Even if you disagree with the content, there is wisdom in knowing how other people think and what other people read.

Tonight I attended an event, The Truth About Non-Fiction Filmmaking, organized by the San Diego Filmmakers. While I attended on IGDA business, I became intrigued with the filmmaking process.

On the panel were speakers Nick Nordquist, Wolfgang Hastert, and Paul Detwiler. Nick has won multiple Emmy awards and owns Industrial Strength Television. Wolfgang Hastert is a prominent and award-winning documentary filmmaker who lectures at University of California, San Diego. Paul Detwiler works as a marine biologist and creates documentary films for nonprofit organizations.

Since there was no agenda, the discussions ranged from their approaches to finding topics, to producing documentaries without preaching to the choir, to their preferences regarding film and video, and eventually to the topic I found most interesting: financing and distribution.

• Nick Nordquist said that ventures such as YouTube aren’t particularly encouraging; however, he expressed positive thoughts about local San Diego company Veoh.
• Wolfgang Hastert said that his films usually cost around US$3,000 per minute with the total budget being around US$120–130,000. His financing for documentaries is usually derived from a single major production company. He also shared a story that emphasizes why entrepreneurs should be prepared with their thirty-second elevator pitch.
• Paul Detwiler described his approach to filming documentaries as directed by a cause whereas Nordquist described his approach as one of chance. There needs to be a reason, a purpose, for creating a documentary.

Basically, it’s all doom and gloom for documentarians. The traditional distribution model is dead, and digital distribution has yet to take off. They are caught in the middle of a transition, the eye of a storm, where earning a living as a documentarian is difficult. All of the speakers work in other fields, such as education and general video production, to support themselves.

comScore Media Metrix today released the second-quarter results of Game Metrix, a quarterly syndicated study analyzing gamers’ cross-platform behaviors and attitudes. The results confirm the findings of previous studies, such as that which was completed by Frank N. Magid Associates.

Brand loyalty remains the leading purchase motivation whereas word of mouth from peer recognition, editorial reviews, and advertising is a nearby runner-up. The results also suggest that 25% of the gaming audience are those who are quantitatively described as hardcore gamers (heavy gamers) in contrast to 75% of the audience, quantitatively described as casual gamers (medium/light gamers.)

In-game advertising is viewed in a more positive light by hardcore gamers whereas the opposite is true of casual gamers. While these results can be interpreted as “in-game advertising sucks because the majority say so”, the minority hardcore gamer is more likely to become a champion of the brand and therefore serve as a thought leader in the casual ranks.

Source: Press Release