Beijing, China — The web is dead, so they claim, but not so yet in China–I say. However, the mobile is just beginning here and GMIC2012 was at the forfront of it all with superstar CEO’s attending from Fruit Ninja, Sina, Tencent, and more. The most interesting pannel for me was the Branding & Merchandising pannel where Fruit Ninja CMO Phil Larsen, Rovio SVP Henri Holm, Talking Cat CBO Narry Singh, and Cut the Rope woman Diana Moldavsky, all spoke about when they noticed they had become a brand and what were they doing about it. For the major part I have to say, it was only the Henri Holm from Rovio who sounded like they had a clear plan and knew what he was talking about. The rest just wanted to slap their logos on T-shirts, which from a fashion perspective isn’t even fashion–it’s merchandising. Still they seemed not to have a real clue what to do with their brands now that they went beyond just being a game.

Panel: Building Global Entertainment Brands out of Mobile Games

Moderator: Akio Tanaka, Co-founder, Infinity Venture Partners

Speakers:

• David Roberts, CEO, Popcap Games (SVP, EA)
• Narry Singh, CBO, Outfit7 (Talking Tom Cat and Friends)
• Phil Larsen, CMO, Halfbrick (Fruit Ninja)
• Diana Moldavsky, CRO, Zeptolab (Cut the Rope)
• Henri Holm, SVP, Rovio (Angry Birds)

This is a prime example where Fashion Professionals could become a major force in bringing these brands to become that: Brands. It is what we do: build brands, create images, from packaging to telling the story behind. We not only can choose the right fabric for that Green Monstor T-shirt, we can give is an interesting shape and design to keep up with the right market demographic for your brand’s target. Emerging brands is what fashion specializes in, and where we are most useful. We do it every day: take a product and spin it into an emotional attachment through sound, light, color, and shape. Unfortanately, these brands don’t understand what it really takes to build a brand, give a a name, and reputation–they may know it in the digital world, but there are so many more interesting things that could be done with it: from cross-overs such as the Faberge Egg and the Angry Birds Space Egsteroid, to models walking down the runway wearing Australia’s leading Swimwear brand and eating fruit–if not throwing it at the audience (Ok, maybe my designers would not take that idea and run with it). Fashion is the tale-spinner and it would do those brands a bit of good to jump out of their box and cooperate with 360Fashion Network.

Video seems to be the next big step and final fronteer for web and mobile–with paid advertising brands, new online video stations,  and enabling technologies emerge to bring us bigger bandwidth such as 4G…what ever happened to WIMAX? I recall it being such a big topic…and it never seemed to materialize.