Videos Game as an Advertising Medium

So last week I spoke at the American Marketing Association on a panel about video gaming. The panel also included members of other agencies, a client, and a gaming developer. The panel proved to be very interesting, but I think the biggest challenge is how are we as marketers going to work with the game developers/studios to develop the right metrics which will allow us, and our clients, to understand the medium and compare it to other media vehicles. I mean let's be honest, we need to quanitify the medium, apply the same business criteria to it as we do to any other media.

There is one small stipulation, we can track time spent, usage, brand awareness, preference, recall, unaided recall, etc. But the question becomes what is the "variable" that we can use to account for the experiential level of participation? If you can drive the new Aston Martin, how much more likely are you going to be to purchase it versus seeing someone else drive it?

Halloween in NYC

So last night I went to check out the infamous Halloween Parade at in the West Village, basically a couple blocks from where I lived. Needless to say I don't think I need to attend another one of those events ever again. It was incredibly overcrowded, too many drunk, AGRESSIVE people, which resulted in fights between guys who could have easily rolled out of deep Compton and men wearing nothing except for a couple chains and a loin cloth. None the less it was one of those experiences that I can comfortably check off my list in things to do. On another note don't ever drive down there or park your car around the parade, there must have been 20 people sitting/standing on top of other people's cars to get a better view. . .

Something one of the people I was with said to me which makes you think. . . So you have a couple in their early fifties (obviously not someone like my parents, I hope) that is all dressed up and ready to go for halloween. . . The question is what is the psychological analysis of what they are wearing, why they are wearing it and is it the only time that they threw on the Cowgirl/Sheep outfit?