I have said before that gaming needs more celebrities. It is just so obvious that people relate to other people far better than they relate to anything else. So by making a person and a product synonymous you can gain huge marketing advantages. It is something that Peter Molyneux has done to great effect for many years. And he has the sales to prove it.

It is something I have always tried to do with my computer game marketing. Eugene Evans at Imagine and the Darling brothers and Oliver twins at Codemasters are the ones that spring immediately to mind. But over the years I have put a lot of game development people into magazines and on to television. It has worked so well that I am amazed that more game marketeers don’t do it.

So it is very, very nice to see that the Ubisoft marketeers have made a celebrity of the producer of Assassin’s Creed, Jade Raymond. She even has a fansite. Obviously it helps that she isn’t unattractive, but that is true of most things in life. What also helps is that she is coherent, telegenic and obviously intelligent and so communicates very well in the media.

Of course this has attracted some negative publicity. But this goes with the territory. It is absolutely inevitable that if you have a public persona, no matter how good, there are some that will advance their own agendas by taking a swipe at you. It is the price you have to pay and something you just have to learn to live with. But the upside is so massive that it is easy to ignore the denigrators.

Which brings us to Jeff Minter. His recent game Space Giraffe has been outsold by Frogger on Xbox Live Arcade. And he is not happy. To the point where he had a massive late night rant on his blog. And the power of celebrity is such that this created a lot of worldwide publicity. Which will certainly have helped sales of Space Giraffe.

So are you a marketeer and do you use celebrity?