Let me entertain...me

According to analyst reports out last week, people are starting to think about games in a whole new light. So much so that gaming will become the most popular form of entertainment in the UKover the coming year. The boffins are predicting that games sales will rise by a whopping 42 per cent to the dizzying heights of £4.64bn. Compare that to the total predicted sales for music AND video at £4.46bn and I think you’ll find that we have a new king of the castle.

Now, I love music, but I also love gaming (probably love gaming more) so I don’t want to be giving the music industry a hard time – but the figures don’t lie. Apparently the video games industry has more than doubled in the last 5 years while music sales have struggled. You might be thinking that the ongoing issue of online downloads has caused problems for the music industry, but the same figures show that downloads only represent 4 per cent of totals sales. Want to know what the big growth area for the music and video industry has been? Online sales of DVDs and CDs – go figure.

MyTake – Video games aren’t cheap, costing you around about 3 or 4 times the amount that a CD would cost you, so the more popular gaming becomes the more substantial the sales figures will be. But, you can’t take this achievement away from the gaming industry, it’s been in the pipeline for a long time. The interesting space to watch is what the “multitasking entertainer” is going to be doing in the coming years. We may only have one set of “eyeballs”, but we’re consuming up to 3 different types of entertainment at one time and that’s probably going to get even more intense.

Nokia sets the bench mark

I don’t usually write about out-and-out marketing initiatives, but I happen to think hat this is a good one. Global handset manufacturer and collective group of Finish boffins, Nokia, has produced a number of benches complete with their new “comes with music” handsets integrated and placed them in cities around the UK. The really cool thing is that the music is different from city to city.   

In Liverpool, the handsets have lots of Beatles tracks and in my home town of Birmingham (Brum to those in the know) the mighty (mighty) Sabbath feature heavily. We still love you Ozzie. Also, in order to protect them from theft and drunken student pranks, the benches come complete with a security guard and a performer.     

MyTake – I thought experiential marketing had died on its arse (English term for ass) because of the associated costs, but apparently not. I think that this is good move by Nokia and will help get their brand out there and associated with music. One of the biggest rules with product marketing is that the power is in the product. How many times have you been talking to a friend and they tell you “you’ve gotta try it”?