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Product Placement on the WWW
By Devin D. O'Leary
MAY 18, 1998:
Buy Me, Byte Me
Just the other day, I received in the mail a copy of "The
Lost Island of Alanna." This CD-ROM game is part of Cherry
Coke's colossal summer promotion. They're actually distributing
half a million free copies of this computer game to promote awareness
of their sugary beverage. In order to play the game you need to
A) get the CD-ROM, B) drink lots of Cherry Coke and C) visit the
company's Web site. Fact is, lots of companies have been turning
to the Web to promote their products. With the millions of Web
sites worldwide, however, corporate fat cats quickly realized
they'd need a gimmick to lure people to their little corner of
Cyberspace. I mean, who's gonna bother to show up for just an
electronic billboard? We want games, we want videos, we want free
stuff! Here are some of the more interesting attempts at product
placement on the Web.
Cherry Coke (www.cherrycoke.com)--Here's the one that got
me started. I must admit there's an awful lot of effort going
into this latest Cherry Coke push. If you haven't tracked down
one of the CD-ROMs, you can download a complete version of "The
Lost Island of Alanna" right here. Needless to say, the game
is a weak rip-off of the multimillion-selling "Myst."
Just like "Myst," you're supposed to explore this ancient
(and, rather boringly, uninhabited) island, occasionally solving
small logic puzzles in order to continue. Coke has insinuated
its product into the game by requiring players to obtain clues
off bottles of Cherry Coke. My Cherry Coke bottle contained some
cuneiform letters on the label and the Roman numeral IX under
the cap (or was it XI?). I'm not exactly sure how these "clues"
are supposed to help me. The Cherry Coke Web site also contains
chat rooms for the legions of allegedly rabid players to exchange
hints and tips. There's also a section called the "Standlake
University" page which contains "excerpts from a study
about Alanna previously published by an archeologist." None
of this seems to be of much help in playing the game. Aside from
the pretty graphics, there's little difference between "Alanna"
and the butt-simple text-only adventure games I used to play on
my ancient VIC-20. It's also slooooooow as all get out on my non-Pentium
system. But, hey, it's free!
Ragu (www.ragu.com)--Some savvy Web programmer talked the
Ragu pasta sauce company into getting its own Web site. Actually,
the results are pretty absorbing. The whole site is supposedly
run by "Mama"--a hospitality-crazed, homily-filled Italian
mother. You can get recipes off Mama, color her placemats and
play her videogame. That's right, the Ragu people have their own
videogame, titled "Go, Mama, Go!" The object of the
game (www.eat.com:80/mamarama2/index.html) is to guide mama through
the levels of her home to feed hungry guests with Ragu's new Cheese
Creations. Standing in the way of Mama's culinary mission are
some giant, mobile meatballs--eat too many and you'll be too full
to continue. The "Donkey Kong"-style game boasts some
funny graphics, clever gameplay and catchy music. The first few
levels are free (in order to play the following levels, you need
to get a UPC code off a bottle of Cheese Creations). "Go,
Mama, Go!" operates off a proprietary plug-in called ClickToons.
ClickToons (which is less than 150K and only takes a couple seconds
to download) allows real-time game play with music, regardless
of the end user's connection. Getting ClickToons installed was
a breeze. Unfortunately, after two days of attempting to download
the game itself, all I ever wound up with was an error
message telling me: "Failed to load file. It might be missing."
But, hey, it's free!
Slush Puppies (www.slushpuppie.co.uk)--My entire youth
was spent at the Circle K down the street reading Captain America
comic books and sucking down Slush Puppies. Who knew they were
actually British? Well, they are, and those industrious Brits
have now fashioned a pretty nice Slush Puppie presence in cyberspace.
Come to the "Slush Works" and you can explore a rainbow-colored
Slush Puppie factory populated by happy canine wage slaves. Explore
the 10 different factory rooms by clicking on Slush Puppie's telescope
and peering into each room (yeah, sounds a bit voyeuristic to
me, too). Each room contains an assortment of information, games
and activities. There's the Ice Room, the Flavor Room, the Testing
Room (which was closed for some odd reason when I visited). The
Shockwave games (like the self-explanatory "Catch or Splat
Game" in the Flavor Room) are all pretty simple, but entertaining
nonetheless. The frame-based browsing system tends to hang up
a lot, which could frustrate younger visitors. But, hey, it's
free!
--Devin D. O'Leary
devin@alibi.com
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