Episode 22: Digital Branded Entertainment
Listen (26 min, 26 seconds)In this week's episode of The Digital Edge we revisit the world of Branded Entertainment with a digital slant. With the aim of Branded Entertainment being to positively associate your product with other, innocuous forms of entertainment, Digital is a prime candidate. International examples such as Lonelygirl15 had a young girl video blogging about her life and conveniently speaking about products that she used in her day. Millions of views and hundreds of thousands of followers later the truth came out that the supposedly lonely girl was a complex marketing stunt.
While deceitfully attracting customers might not be the best long term strategy the opportunities to brand online games, webisodes and create what is known as utilitainment are rife. In this episode we look at what it takes to create digital branded content and how your brand can benefit from a foray online. We speak to Mark van Diggelen of Skillpod Media, a company that makes branded games for companies. We're also joined by Lauren Beukes to talk about Alternate Reality Games, Lionel Smith of Trudon to talk about Widgets and Tristan Owen of MEDIAS to talk about Webisodes.
In our Agency of the week we speak to Grant Shippey of Amorphous, a digital communications agency based in Johannesburg. Our top ten this week is the ten top blogs according to Amatomu and Amorphous. Finally, Rob Stokes joins us with his second tip on how to improve your sites SEO ranking. We're also joined by Kerry-Anne Gilowey with the news.
Guests:
Tristan Owen:
Tristan is the co-founder of MyVideo, South Africa’s first video sharing platform is the Chief Operating Officer of MEDIAS, A Cape Town based video technology company. He is passionate about all things online and is an aspiring Photographer, Videographer, Web Developer and Outdoor Adventurer.
Mark van Diggelen:
Mark has been involved in the development and design of Internet initiatives since 1995 and more so has been actively involved in the development of online communities since 1997. Subsequently, in 2004, Mark started SkillPod Media with the primary focus of building highly interactive and addictive online casual gaming brands. His other talent is his vast experience in Search engine Optimisation (SEO) which spans White, Grey and Black Hat techniques. This includes the effective design, optimisation and design of link building strategies to ensure websites get regularly spidered and indexed by the top international search engines.
Lauren Beukes:
Lauren Beukes is a writer, TV scriptwriter and recovering journalist (although she occasionally falls off the wagon).
She's the author of Moxyland , a speculative urban thriller originally published by Jacana that has been picked up by Angry Robot for release in the US, UK and Australia.
Lionel Smith:
Lionel Smith Gm Of Online And Search at Trudon, previously known as Telkom Directory Services.
Grant Shippey:
Grant describes himself as a technophilic, tie-averted, professional loudmouth. Having studied extensively at Wits University in Johannesburg, Grant embarked on a career in asset management and was on team that launched fund of fund unit trusts into the South African market. After successfully starting up their Cape Town operations, Grant and a couple of mates from Business School tackled this thing called the Internet.
Links:
MEDIAS: http://www.medias.co.za/
Skillpod: http://www.skillpodmedia.com/
Lauren Beukes: http://www.moxyland.com/
Trudon: http://www.trudonhome.co.za/corp/
Amorphous: http://www.amorphous.net/
Quirk: http://quirk.biz/
Cape Town Daily Photo: http://www.capetowndailyphoto.com/
Jarred Cinman: http://jarredcinman.com/
Saul Kropman: http://saulk.co.za
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