Games for Brands

Join Games for Brands on October 27th to learn how your organization can embrace fun, play and games in your engagement strategies with your customers and audience.

Some of the finest thinkers and doers around who know how to harness the power of games in marketing have been assembled – understand how you can figure out what makes people’s minds tick, and how you can really get closer to them by provoking the innate sense of play which we all share.

If you would like to increase engagement, build loyalty, broaden your reach and make your brand more sticky and compelling, this is the event for you. Bookings are now being taken – limited availability.

The day will also cover examples of brands such as Comcast, Warner Brothers, Hasbro, Syfy, Brightstorm, Meredith, Wellcome Trust, Nesta, BBC, AVIVA and the NHS, and many more who are already using play to drive engagement.

Who Should Attend

This event has been designed for professionals tasked with changing people’s minds and building awareness, interest, desire and action.

So, if you work in marketing, digital, social, mobile, content monetisation, an agency, or in the games space, come along and see if you can grab a slice of the gamification pie (projected to grow from $100m to $2.6b by 2016!)

Objectives of the Day

Learn more about how to use play to engage your audience, create more stickiness and encourage virality.
Hear the experts’ view on what makes for successful gamification, with case studies on good, bad and ugly efforts.
Identify the specific gamification potential for your product or service.
Explore practical tips on deciding what gaming mechanism to use, designing a solution, conveying it to your client and organisation and procuring a platform.
Promote your brand on some of the hottest media properties right now – whether Zynga, Rovio, EA or Playstation.

Speakers

Kam Star

Kam Star is a digital media entrepreneur, inventor and an award winning games developer. Creating his first computer game in 1986, he studied Architecture and is deeply passionate about innovation in play, influence, games and social media. Founder of PlayGen, Kam designs and develops playful solutions and platforms for delivering engaging experiences across the digital landscape. He has produced gaming projects for the BBC, AVIVA, Eden Project, UNESCO, McKinsey, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, NESTA, MoD, NHS, TSB, Wellcome Trust and many more.

Rick Gibson

Rick is a former Commercial Development Director at UPC Media (where he handled international games deals), a Cranfield MBA, and a Director at GIC. A specialist in online gaming and globalisation, Rick has worked in gaming for eleven years, written numerous reports on gaming, and speaks regularly at industry conferences and in the media about games innovation, new commercial models and the UK development sector.

Nicholas Lovell

Nicholas Lovell is CEO of GameShadow, the intelligent tool that helps gamers find the latest patches, demos and cool things to buy for their games. The company was started in 2003 and has raised one round of angel investment. Until April 2006, Nicholas was Managing Director of Lodestar Partners, a corporate finance firm that focuses exclusively on the electronic games industry. He has over a decade of experience advising companies in the media and technology sectors on buying and selling business and raising capital.

Dr. Richard A. Bartle

Dr. Richard A. Bartle is Professor of Computer Game Design at the University of Essex, UK. He is best known for having co-written in 1978 the first virtual world, MUD, and for his 1996 Player Types model which has seen widespread adoption by the MMO industry. His 2003 book, “Designing Virtual Worlds”, is the standard text on the subject, and he is an influential writer on all aspects of MMO design and development. In 2010, he was the first recipient of the prestigious Game Developers Choice award of Online Game Legend.

Katie Bell

Since the early days of digital and online Katie has been involved in one successful venture after another. In 2008 she established the first UK Stardoll office and has been instrumental in positioning the Stardoll brand. She has developed strong relationships with a variety of companies including the NSPCC, Hasbro, Warners (music & movies), Egmont, Alberto Culver…to name but a few, and created innovational campaigns such as ‘Mortal Kiss’ with Random House, Simple Skincare’s “Search for a Star” and launch of their spotless skincare range, Beat Bullying’s virtual march, JC Penny and Mattel licensing deals.

Marc Goodchild

For the past 10 years Marc has been working as a Senior Executive at the BBC specialising in digital production, cross-platform TV formats and product delivery across TV, web, mobile and IPTV applications. He has managed annual turnovers of £10 million and is directly involved in the commercial exploitation strategy for top digital properties. Over the years, he has also developed a strong reputation for developing and producing cutting edge, innovative TV and interactive concepts that really make the most of multi-platform distribution.

Rupert Harris

Rupert is a multiple award winning creative focused on developing entertainment properties and turning them into highly successful 360 degree brands. His credits include ‘Bamzooki’ the BBC’s smash hit cross platfrom children’s brand and Four Docs, Channel 4’s ground breaking interactive documentary channel.

Sam Sethi

Besides being a co-organiser of FloweryTweetup and Liverpool FC fan, Sam is an Entrepreneur, a W3C Invited Expert and an active participant in the open web community. He has been a strong advocate of open web standards ever since his time with Netscape in the late-90s. Sam is currently working on a new project called Skadoosh which utilises many of the new open web standards including – ActivityStreams, Portable Contacts, WebFinger, Salmon, OStatus, OExchange and RDFa.

Volker Hirsch

Volker has been at the forefront of mobile and digital media for nearly a decade. In 2002, he helped conceive the world’s first mobile artist services for the likes of Britney Spears, Eve and Duran Duran. He then oversaw some early mobile games landmark licenses such as Marvel, Hasbro, Activision (Call of Duty, True Crime, Guitar Hero), LEGO, BMW, Konami, WPT, etc) and struck 250+ distributor deals including tier-1 operators all over the world. Recently, he co-founded Blue Beck, a new smartphone games creator and joined social infrastructure software specialists Scoreloop heading strategy and global business development.

Jeff Coghlan

Jeff Coghlan is the creative force and digital visionary behind award-winning branded entertainment specialists, Matmi. As a digital strategist, Jeff’s opinions – not always popular or mainstream – are sought by clients, major advertising agencies and happily, his peers too. Speaker engagements include The Develop Conference (2009, 2010), Elmwood’s Digital Picnic (2008), Brandhouse Digital Sparks (2010) and most recently a roundtable with Brand-e.biz (the branded entertainment specialist site) on “Why Brands Play Games”.

Gilles Storme

Gilles Storme heads up RockYou EMEA advertising sales which includes application distribution, 3rd party ad network and brand sales. Prior to joining RockYou, Gilles launched First Light Cosmetics, a mineral make-up brand marketed mainly online. Before launching his own business Gilles was pan European sales director at AOL and launched Platform-A as a regional proposition. He also held several positions at Discovery Networks and National Geographic Channel.

Bart Hufen

Bart is Player-1 at BrandNewGame, speaker and specialist on Digital Interactive Branding – games in particular. He is a graduate in Business and Engineering Master of Brand Management and wrote the book “A Brand New Playground”, describing how games can be used as marketing tools. Bart also advises brands in interactive brand strategy. He is director of NIMA online and is a guest lecturer at the University of Amsterdam.

Miguel Andrés-Clavera

Miguel runs the Innovation and game lab within JWT Experience London working at the intersection of creativity, technology, research, social change and development, with a special focus on high-end and casual games, mobile platforms and convergence to amplify brand experiences in the form of what he calls expanded play. Miguel has worked as interactive creative lead and game designer in several agencies for brands such as Sony and Adidas and previously as software engineer for Barclays. He co-founded the Social Technology and Cultural Interfaces research group at Goldsmiths Digital Studios, where he also lectured.

Tom Chatfield

Tom Chatfield is a freelance author, essayist, game writer and theorist, and sometime thinker. His book on the culture of video games, “Fun Inc.”, is published by Virgin Books in the UK and Pegasus in the US. His next book, about digital ideas, is out in late 2011. Tom has done design, writing and creative consultancy work for a number of games and media companies, including Google, Mind Candy, Grex, Red Glasses and Intervox; He’s a faculty member at London’s School of Life and also consults on new media, engagement and digital learning.

Louise Downe

Louise a digital service designer, focused on the shape of the web to come and new mobile concepts that thrive in it. She currently works for Tate where she thinks, writes and designs stuff that makes life better.

Gemma Bardsley

Gemma works in Advertising in London, and currently runs the marketing/Web at the Science Museum.

Jo Twist

Jo is Commissioning Editor, Education at Channel 4. She joined the channel in 2010 from the BBC, where she was Multiplatform Commissioner for Entertainment & Switch responsible for digital formats and online products. Before that, she was BBC Three Multiplatform Channel Editor and led the online strategy for the channel’s rebrand. She re-joined the BBC in 2007 after heading up Digital Society & Media research at the ippr. She holds a Ph.D. which looked at online communities, digital inclusion and youth identity.

Mark Sage

Mark has worked for Carlson Marketing, now part of Groupe Aeroplan for over 15 years and has experience of technology development, loyalty programme design and loyalty marketing. He has gained extensive experience of consumer orientated marketing programs, having implemented and consulted on loyalty solutions for clients such as LTSB, Starwood Hotels, Best Buy, Barclaycard, RBS, Brother, MBNA, First Data, Visa and Coca Cola.

David Varela

David is a freelance writer and producer who creates games for major international brands. With a background in theatre, radio and advertising, David moved into games in 2005 as in-house writer at Mind Candy, working on the seminal adventure game Perplex City. Since then, he has produced the world’s first console-based Alternate Reality Game for Sony PlayStation, a global multi-lingual adventure starring Lewis Hamilton for Reebok, and a five-month-long game for Dr Pepper called The Pepperhood. He also teaches extensively, most recently acting as tutor on the Arvon Foundation’s first ever course in ‘Writing for Games’.

Jeremy Waite

Jeremy is the Head of Social Media at Phones4U – the UK’s leading mobile phone retailer with more than 500 stores nationwide. Past credits include working with FTSE-100 organisations such as Unilever and Centrica as well as iconic brands such as Reebok, Unilever, MTV and Kellogg’s. He is a featured monthly columnist at Entrepreneur Magazine and has over 13 years experience growing brands, developing successful marketing strategies and designing award-winning packaging. Jeremy is also the author of ‘Sex, Brands & Rock’n’Roll’ a marketing book for entrepreneurs, and ’30 Days to Build Your Brand’, a program developed to help start-up’s and SME’s build the foundation of a successful brand.

Jo Underhill

Jo developed the advertising sales function at confetti.co.uk before moving on to join primelocation.com before the site was launched. Following the primelocation.com sale to Associated New Media 5 years later Jo moved to propertyfinder.com to manage the transition of the web site to a new platform following it’s purchase by News International and REA group and subsequently to develop the media sales offering. Since joining LOVEFiLM in Oct ’08, Jo has developed a highly successful in house team providing solutions for film studios and leading brands who wish to communicate with the LOVEFiLM customer base.

Adrian Hon

Adrian Hon is co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at Six to Start, specialising in creating new forms of storytelling through ARGs, transmedia, or mobile and web-based games. Clients have included Disney, the BBC, Channel 4, and Penguin, and Six to Start has won multiple awards including Best of Show at SXSW. He also writes about technology for The Telegraph, is writing a Kickstarter-funded book and blog called A History of the Future in 100 Objects, co-organises the Hive Mind Challenge and is the founder of Transmedia London.