Madden pointed to a recent example of brand integration with Toyota Prius in the Facebook Monolopy Millionaires game.
But the future of this character looks bright, as does the potential for brand integration beyond the traditional movie and video game tie-in.
Last year Rod Swanson, senior director, brand integration at Electronic Arts took a step closer when he volunteered to go to a homeless shelter last year.
The days (and the auditoriums) are packed with discussion of digital, mobile, brand integration and the agency model of the future topics we have been discussing and debating over and over for years.
However, how much of this has been due to innovation, the integration with iTunes, or simply brand momentum?
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The goal should be full integration over time, with a consistent brand experience that extends from physical stores into the digital web.
Such a strategy is not so much vertical or horizontal integration, but a wheel, with the brand at the hub and each of the spokes a means of exploiting it.
The remainder depends on specific business goals that are undisclosed (although Broughton did provide an example from a previous year: the successful integration of BAT's acquisition of the Rothman cigarette brand).
Without this integration of in-store, mobile, and online, a brand potentially sees one consumer as three separate people, and the customer really has no incentive for returning to a website more often than absolutely necessary.
Once these factors have been worked through, the integration process begins with a rollout of human resource processes and they begin the process of transitioning the brand to the Vivo model.
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