Dr. Pepper iPhone Advergame

Yet another company is riding the popularity-wave of the apple iPhone, and creating a specialized program for the product (check out my old post about Warner Bro.s’ I am Legend). Dr. Pepper is reaching out to its sugar-craving consumer base with an advergame that is to be distributed solely to iPhone users. This soon-to-be released game is, in fact, the first branded game ever to be made available on the iPhone, and, should it succeed in its objectives, it will likely be the first of many.

This game, called “Matchcaps,” was created specially for the iPhone’s safari internet browser. This game, created by Imaginuity New Media, will be free, and it will not even need to be downloaded to the phone. It will be accessible through the site: www.drpepper.com/matchcaps. If you already have safari as your internet browser on your home computer, you can actually access and play the game on your home computer, should you not own the $500 iPhone.



This game marks a relatively large milestone for Dr. Pepper, as it is clever of them to once again be at the cusp of what is new and exciting in the world of untraditional, unconventional marketing in the form of advertainment and advergaming. Being first-to-market with this advergame for the iPhone marks yet another good move for Dr. Pepper’s parent company,Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages. They are still riding the coattails of the increasingly popular “Phil Collins Gorilla Drummer Cadbury Ad” which has nearly 1.5 million hits on its most popular upload link on YouTube (check it out below). As unrelated as this ad may be to any of Cadbury’s products, it is still tremendously captivating, and pretty funny to boot.

Phil Collins Gorilla Ad Cadburys Dairy Milk

If you want to find out a bit more about Dr. Pepper’s Matchcaps game, check out this CNN Money Article.

Subway Family Guy Advergame

Subway, king of mass produced meats and cheeses loaded onto six-inch rolls, has created a pretty decent advergame in affiliation with the TV show Family Guy. Available Here, “The Quahog Triangle” is a sweepstakes giveaway type of game, seemingly modeled off of McDonald’s success with their annual Monopoly giveaway efforts.

When you enter The Quahog Triangle, you are immediately prompted to give your email address in order to participate, which is pretty clever in itself, as this is an excellent way to track the campaign’s success, as well as to add names to the surely ever-expanding Subway customer database. You also have to submit your physical mailing address, as well as your birth date. Also, surprise, surprise, the text that allows you to opt out of future mailings through Subway is rather small and discretely located on the sign-in page. This is by no means a bad idea for Subway, however, as increasing their physical mailing list will be nothing other than beneficial for them.

Through the game, you can “Test your trivia smarts, send an e-card, play for a chance to instantly win over $100,000 in cash and prizes…and more!” The entire game, obviously, is designed and executed with a Family Guy theme and format. This is a rather clever affiliation, as long as Subway is hoping to target a younger demographic with their marketing efforts here. I suppose that any high school kid with some lunch money in suburbia may become somewhat more predisposed to select Subway as their luncheon destination of choice after playing this game. Then again, maybe not. However, either way, they have covered all of their bases with this campaign, and done as much as possible to promote it (so it seems).

Making the game incentive-based will likely greatly increase the participation rates, making it based around Family Guy may even further increase those rates. In addition, they have solicited some pretty decent affiliate promotion for the game; maxim magazine is one example of this. They have increased their visibility through Maxim’s Online Contests, where there is an animated link to the game. This audience is likely on-point, but it may be a stark contrast to Subways usual, wholesome, family-oriented brand image that they try to display. Integrating their marketing communications in order to deliver a consistent brand image may not be Subway’s strong suit. However, the odds that this game’s promotion on maxim.com would be brought to the attention of conservative Subway regular patrons are rather slim, so this will not likely hurt them in any way.

The Quahog Triangle game itself is as simple as clicking a button to start the triangle, and clicking a button to stop it. It is essentially a free, virtual slot machine. However, as always, luck doesn’t exactly prevail for me…I lost. If anybody plays it and actually wins anything, please let me know through a comment below. Upon losing, you are prompted to “Tell your friends” about the game by way of an E-Card to their email address…this is a good way to increase word-of-mouth about the campaign, and a way that makes it easy for the user on the site to do so.

The game itself lacks any true Family Guy humor; in fact, it is basically devoid of humor of any kind, which is a bit strange. However, overall, it is a good co-sponsorship tool for Subway to promote its products, and for Family Guy to promote its show, and the Family Guy Season 5 DVD Boxed Set, which is now available for purchase.

Facebook to Offer Advertising Space: Marketers Rejoice

Facebook just announced that it will begin to sell ad space, and will offer several packaged advertising initiatives. This social-networking giant has over 50 million users, the majority of whom are Gen-Y’ers that are usually unreceptive to traditional advertising means and methods, due to the fact that they have been inundated with them since they were old enough to recognize the shape of a man on a pony, or a fabric alligator. Needless to say, marketers have been chomping at the bit for the opportunity to be able to get to this elusive group of people. They may just have this opportunity with Facebook.

Facebook is now going to offer several different prepackaged services. The first is “Brand Profile Pages,” which are essentially profiles similar to individual users’ profiles, but that serve the purpose of soliciting and promoting a brand name, and its products. They are not really re-inventing the wheel with this one, as Facebooks’ main competitior, MySpace, has been doing this for ages. However, it will be interesting to see how the Facebook corporate profiles compare to those on MySpace.

The second spice that Facebook offers is “Tailored Ads,” which essentially just allows individual Facebook users to sign up as a “fan” of a brand, which is basically akin to “poking” a “friend” in the usual community. If someone cites themselves as a “fan” of a certain brand, and its profile (which will likely offer some kind of incentive for the person to do so, such as free downloads, etc.) then the brand has the ability to notify that person’s Facebook friends about this new relationship, and an ad, of course, accompanies this notification.

The third Facebook offering is “Partnerships with Retailers,” which is another Friend notification system that will enable the company that is partnered with Facebook (there are currently 44 retail sites that could afford the, surely, massive bid to become affiliates) to make all of a Facebook users’ Friends savvy to any transaction that particular individual makes with said company. If that makes no sense, here’s an example: If you rent a certain movie from a Blockbuster (on of the lucky 44 affiliates), then your friends on Facebook will know about it.



However, Facebook has, until now, been an advertising-free haven where people can communicate and collaborate without having to see countless ads. The two big questions on the top of my mind are: 1) Will Zuckerberg and his crew of flunkies be able to display ads in a way that is tactful and clever enough not to perturb the loyal Facebook users too much?... and 2) If the advertising and marketing tactics become too invasive, will the users slow or cease their site visits, or protest in some way? Only time will tell, I suppose. From a business perspective, you can’t blame Zuckerberg for finally taking the advertising bait that has been dangling in front of him since Facebook began. It is about time that this super-hyped, amazingly-highly appraised social networking site begins to live up to its monetary worth, and build some tangible revenues for its owner(s).

To read more about all of this, and to take a look at some staggering financial figures, check out This Article, written by Laura Petrecca and Jon Swartz of USA Today.

Norelco’s Shave Everywhere Advertainment Site

So, one of Philip’s subsidiary companies, Norelco, has created a funny new buzz marketing (get the double entendre?) site to promote their men’s electric razors. The brand of humor that they use is pretty over-the-top, but it caters appropriately to the demographic that they are trying to reach. The age demographic would likely be between 18-28, and the gender would certainly be men.

The site is called Shave Everywhere, and it is made specifically for the Philips Norelco Bodygroom, which is an attempt to re-market the traditional electric shaver in order to specialize it to shave extremities that are far from the face. The spokesperson for the site is a young, 10 o’clock local evening news type of personality with flawlessly parted hair, wearing a white bathrobe. The Bodygroomer’s possible applications are, thankfully, not demonstrated on a person, but, rather, by the humorous juxtaposition of several different kinds of fruit next to the guy…at least on the introduction to the site. If you select “Where to Shave” from the main menu, however, things get a bit more graphic. Blue circles point out the various areas that the Bodygroom will supposedly shave with ease…and this is done on the actual guy…such as the “Groin and Posterior,” and the “Underarms,” fortunately, the guy’s robe stays on all the while.

The “History” section is also pretty hilarious. An old guy, named “Follicle Phil Fontana” prefaces this little doozy saying “Things were different then…we didn’t have no calculators or internets…no…Bodygrooms. Back then, If the hair on ya back or ya co** or your ***** got too long…well, ya might just have ta live wid' it, ya know?” Then, the spokesperson of this site gives us a lovely anecdotal history of the Bodygroom, and the way it has benefited society since its inception. He speaks of unfortunate souls such as “Harry Hair Vest Houllihan,” and “Checky Mansweater Reubenstein,” and the terrible times that they had to go through on the beach back on Coney Island. The History goes on in much greater depth, but it is best that you venture on to this section of the site and learn this horrific history yourself.

Another point of possible interest on the site is the “Music Video,” which features the spokesperson himself talking about the hard times that he went through before finding the Bodygroom. “It’s so hard to be a Don Juan when you’ve got a Chinchilla wrapped around your Don*.” It gets worse from there…again, I’ll let you decide whether you want to hear more or not. This section, much like the rest of the site, has censored profanity…but it is still pretty easy to distinguish.

Maybe my favorite part of the site, for its subtle and yet excellent comical value, is “The Optical Inch,” which is an eye exam with the message “I love my extra inch” hidden, though not very well hidden, in the text.

In summation, not much of this site is made for the ultra-conservative or the Parents Television Council. It is not exactly family-friendly, but, to some people it is pretty funny. You be the judge. At any rate, it is pretty brave of Philips to take this step and put something this controversial out there. My hat’s off to them for being so daring.

Many thanks to Anya over at SHiFT agency in Boulder, Colorado, for showing an active interest in my blog, and for notifying me about this hilarious new Norelco site.

Volkswagen Golf Auditions Advertainment

Yet I again I find myself blogging on an auto manufacturer that is on top of its game in terms of its marketing efforts. This time, Volkswagen is the company of the hour. They have recently created a Web site that definitely falls within the scope of effective advertainment. Golf Auditions is a clever little flash site that successfully combines humor and perhaps the oldest sales technique of all time: product demonstration.

The site opens to 7 people sitting in chairs, under the premise that they are waiting for auditions to see if they might be selected as the new salesperson/spokesperson for the Volkswagen Golf. Each individual represents a different car model, or a specific feature that adheres to all of the Golf models, and the talent on the site is hired to sarcastically, and blatantly represent their own Golf model, based on the people’s physical characteristics, as well as their overall mannerisms and idiosyncrasies.



Volkswagen makes some pretty bold moves with this campaign, namely through some of the more obvious physical traits of several of the characters that are supposed to represent a few different models. Perhaps the two most attention-grabbing characters are the naked hippie and the cross-dresser, who represent the environmental features of all of the Golfs, and the Cross-Golf, respectively.

On the site, the idea is to click on each of the different people who are auditioning, and they will then give you a run-through of their sales pitches / product overviews for their Golf models. Each video is short enough, and funny enough to retain the viewers’ attention, and they are all worth watching if you want to get a chuckle or two. The short videos vary in terms of the amount of actual product demonstration that they go into, but at the very least, each one demonstrates the unique features of the different models, and highlights several major key product features that are (obviously) shown in a positive light.

Will the site itself, by virtue of its content, get people to want to buy the cars? Probably not, but that is not what it is trying to do, nor is that usually the main goal of advertainment in general. Instead, the site will certainly leave the viewer with a lasting impression of Volkswagen, at the very least, which is an effective promotional tactic in itself.

Kudos to Martina at Adverblog (again!) for bringing this site to my attention through her post Here.

Nissan Rogue Cell Phone Advergame

It seems as though the automotive industry is one of those the most in-tuned (get the double entendre?) to the latest marketing and advertising techniques. Again and again, I find myself posting on car companies that are making advergames (see my Scion post Here, and my Toyota Yaris post Here). It seems as though Nissan has decided to follow the recurring trend of a car company creating an advergame in order to market to a younger, extremely tech-savvy generation of car buyers.

Nissan is supposedly doing this in an entirely new way in the auto industry (though this is a self-stated claim); they have designed an advergame for their new Nissan Rogue vehicle which is to be used on mobile cell phones, but downloaded online. This game is to be one of several online “ad units” centered around the branding of the Rogue that people will be able to download onto their phones. The game is slated to be rather advanced, as far as cell phone games go, with accelerating levels of difficulty for the player. According to This Article from CNNMoney.com, “Additionally, the Rogue Mobile game breaks new ground with respect to performance tracking and measurability, delivering an unprecedented level of data and consumer insights back to Nissan.”

The game itself, and the rest of the digitized online content that accompanies it, was developed and produced by MangoMOBILE, of Omnicom, in affiliation with TEQUILA\, which is a subsidiary of TBWA Worldwide. Jamie Wells, VP of Strategy & Client Services at MangoMOBILE had this to say about the advergame and the online campaign in general: “While many are content with entering the mobile marketing space via simple text campaign, it's always great when a client like Nissan comes along and shows real initiative ... encouraging our strategists and developers to really push the envelope and launch a breakout mobile campaign that spans mobile gaming, online advertising, text distribution and even downloadable wallpapers. We are thrilled to be working with TEQUILA\ and Nissan on the Rogue launch, and look forward to working with them on even more innovative, more forward-leaning mobile marketing campaigns in the months and years to come.”

Nissan’s ultimate goal of this campaign sounds strikingly similar to that of Scion’s goal for its Little Deviants advergame. Robert Brown, Senior Manager of Interactive Marketing for Nissan in North America, explains “While the mobile medium is a perfect fit for the Nissan Rogue brand, we knew that we had to make it easy for consumers to discover and ultimately acquire the Rogue mobile content.” While Brown refers to the ease with which people can download this game online, he also subtly hints at one of Nissan’s goals for this campaign: increasing word-of-mouth. Nissan seems to be trying out the very same process of consumer self-discovery of the brand that has worked so effectively for Scion (yet again, check out my old post Here). Long story short, if something works the first time, use it again…and if something worked for someone else, emulate it to the best of your abilities and use it yourself.

EU Anti-Smoking Advertainment Campaign

Yet again I will be deviating from the main focus of this blog (advertainment solely in the US), with a post about a form of European advertainment. Sometimes I can’t help but post about European marketing and advertising efforts, because quite often they are truly at the cusp of innovation, incubating some of the best advertainment ideas around…before the same ideas finally ebb over to America across the Atlantic.

However, this time, it seems as though Europe may have taken a cue from America for one of their campaigns. A few weeks ago, the State Tobacco Education Prevention & Partnership in Colorado created a PSA of sorts in the vehicle of a Web site (Check out my old post on this Here). The primary target audience for this site is young adults between the ages of 18-24. Its main objective is to get them to stop smoking, or, better yet, to never start, if they haven’t already. Well, the European Union has come up with a clever campaign that seems to be oriented towards the same age demographic, and certainly for the same purposes.



The site is called Nicomarket, and it takes a slapstick, slap-in-the-face kind of approach to getting people to quit smoking. It is designed in a manner reminiscent of a 1980’s used car dealership…where large plaid jackets, oversized ties, and the hard sell sales tactic are king. It is actually a pretty funny Web site…it is not too over-the-top, which is good, because it needs to appeal to quite a few different countries (the EU is now up to 27 Countries, with three more candidates awaiting approval), but it is still pretty bold humor.

The general premise of the site is that Nicomarket is part of the company NICO ltd., a company that manufactures several different products, namely a face cream, toothpaste, a mouth spray, and an air freshener. All of the products have little videos that accompany them, which describe their features and uses. Each product is designed as a funny little way to point out the negatives of smoking. Check out a few of the better videos; go to the cream video Here, and the spray video Here

Thanks to Rocco Stallvord at Adverblog for bringing this campaign to my attention. Check out his post on this subject Here.