Jul 18, 2010

Sunday Scavenger Hunt

This is going to sound dumb. But you know when you get the Sunday paper, and you want to find the Parade Magazine, or the coupons, or the comics, and you have to hunt through all those ad inserts to find what you want? That's really a game -- a kind of crummy game, but a game nonetheless. And I mention it because I think it is very much a good analogy for many of the future advergames we are going to see -- "hey, we have something you want -- just dig through these ads to get it!"

4 comments:

  1. Interesting idea. The problem is, what is these things people would like to dig through tens of ads every week, or even everyday? It must be something really funny or important.

    Another problem is, the publisher of these games will face tons of complaints from its user. But they still want it. Is this similar with drugs?

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  2. I think the onus in on the advertiser, really. Creativity in an ad, or humor, makes me much less likely to 'breeze over it", like the Old Spice Commercials, for instance.

    And in digital formats, such as the internet, smart entities will have "smartvertizing", that tailors itself to the individual end user, (like Facebook, or Hulu).

    Nowadays, it's not just "Buy our product", but "We're really grateful for a few moments of your ADHD/soundbyte time". With the tsunami of advertising, everywhere, the challenge becomes not "stand up", but "stand out".

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  3. You guys are making me think of new terms I don't even know what mean yet... I see, in the future...
    ADHD-vertising
    ab-vertising
    mad-vertising
    bad-vertising
    sad-vertising
    and our winning entry:
    ass-vertising

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  4. Assvertizing :) Makes me smile already. But ads are already in the way of stuff we want and if the ad isn't entertaining itself it will only frustrate. Assvertizing could be really entertaining ;)

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