Games Offer Brands a Unique Way to Be the Entertainment - Not Just Sponsor It

For all their experimentation with social networks, user-generated content and online video, marketers seem content to view games as little more than another advertising platform. Yet with 72% of U.S. consumers playing games of one type or another, according to NPD Group’s Online Gaming 2008 report, they’ve become far too pervasive for marketers and advertisers to ignore. The untapped potential of games lies in their ability to tell stories, thereby more closely linking brand mythology with game play and blurring the lines between brand and entertainment. (more…)

Tim Zuckert, Shift Control President & CEO, appears on the Business Bull podcast to discuss the origins of Shift Control Media and the role of games in marketing.

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Picking up an unexpected third award the following day, a column appearing in Cnet titled ‘The awards for the best Webby acceptance speeches’ (each speech being limited to only 5 words), gave us this nod:

Best use of two awards: The “Happiness Factory” ad campaign for Coca-Cola picked up two awards; the representative accepting the award from agency Shift Control Media used his first five words to say “Seth, your fly is open” and his second, an hour later, to say, “Still down, Seth, getting creepy.”

Shift Control Media’s series of original online games, developed for Coca-Cola, have won a prestigious 2008 Webby Award in the category of Interactive Advertising—Games and Applications. The entry also won the Webby Awards’ People’s Voice Award in the same category. Open to online fans around the world, who voted for their favorite Webby nominees on a special web site, the People’s Voice Awards were sponsored by Nokia. (more…)

Winners of the Webby’s, which were dubbed “the Oscars of the Internet” by The New York Times, will be announced on May 6, 2008 and honored at a gala in New York on June 10th. The Webbys are the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including websites, interactive advertising, online film and video and mobile websites. They’re presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. (more…)

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Mark Findlay, Shift Control COO, appears on Vancouver’s Breakfast Television to discuss the Coca-Cola ‘Happiness Factory’ games and the role of games in branded entertainment.

You can waste a lot of time in the office these days thanks to your computer. Whether it’s solitaire, online poker, Tetris, Pac-Man, you can get your fix. But one game you likely can’t get away with playing in the office is Dance Dance Revolution. Now, thanks to the folks at Shift Control Media and BarelyPolitical.com, you can get your groove on with the presidential candidates. They’ve created Dance 2DC, a game in which you pick your candidate and hot-step it to DC. I’ve been playing with McCain. I can’t get past the first round, but the man’s 100 years old, I can’t expect that much from him!

Dance2DC is a new game by Shift Control for Barely Political. (Visit the site to play it and/or watch the video that inspired the madness.)

We don’t know much about it aside from that Hillary is a disco fever inferno and Edwards channels John Travolta. Then it hit us: wouldn’t life be better if we banished ballots and decided everything with sudden death dance-offs?

You can fake a smile, but you can’t fake the funk.

Greenwich, CT – March 3, 2008 – Shift Control Media, a branded entertainment company specializing in original game development, has partnered with political humor website BarelyPolitical.com to create Dance 2 DC, a humorous take on the American political process.

Dance 2 DC is an online casual game that’s fun and easy to play. Players can assume the roles of candidates like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain, customize their wardrobes for each face-off, then set out on a cross-country dance-a-thon to raise approval ratings. Each level ends with a showdown between candidates, with the ultimate contest set in the oval office at the White House. The game can be found at www.barelypolitical.com. (more…)

The product is simple — a bottle of Coke.

But the product experience is a whole different game.

For Vancouver video-game development company Shift Control Media, the way consumers experience Coke involves entertainment and technology.

By creating cutting-edge video games that consumers can play on Coca-Cola’s website, the two-year-old Fairview district company is bridging the gap between marketing and the large and lucrative gaming world. (more…)