Hi, my name is Alexandre Maron. I am a journalist from Brazil with a strong background in magazines. Through the last decade, I developed and directed two leading magazines for the brazilian market: MONET and ÉPOCA SÃO PAULO. I edited a book about films and developed, along with our books division, a line of books about wines and drinks, for MONET. I got a leave of absence of one year in the UK, where I got my masters degree on Media Management from the University of Westminster, in London. This blog is one of the results of the work done at that time.

After I came back, I started working actively on the digital expansion of our good old offline brands and on the creation of new products. I am currently the director of Digital Innovation on Editora Globo, overseeing 18 websites and all the mobile and tablet operations. No small task, for sure.

I have also been an active blogger since january 2001 and a podcaster, between other personal and professional projects.

PlayFactor gathers my research and random ideas about the use of play concepts to make your product (be it a newspaper, a magazine or just your company website) engaging for the right audience. To do that, I talk about interaction and game design, community management and all that crazy stuff that make your head spin. It’s a lot of fun.

The logo (center image on the header):

The “play” symbol formed by colored wooden blocks. It establishes three forms of use of the concept of play. First as the act of playing a game. Any game. Card, chess, boardgame or video-game. Then, as pure play. With a toy, with a friend, in a sandbox. Finally, play as in playing a song, a film, a TV show.

The tagline:

“Are You Engaging?” Two main meanings here. First, are you interesting to your audience? And then, is you, your company, your group engaged in the effort of being interesting? This is a difficult task, an enormous challenge.