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Collective London W&K London have come up with a lovely website to go with the W&L associated campaign to support Honda. There’s teaser billboards and print, based on anagrams. They point you, very subtly, to Problem Playground, tells you that the full site launches Feb 4th. In the meantime you can place a jigsaw piece on the growing puzzle to get the chance to win a Honda Civic.
Update: Alex from Collective London wrote and corrected me on this. Whilst W&K are the ATL agency, Collective are the online agency of Honda and did the online work. I’m asking both agencies some questions and will publish those later.
Lovely site, lovely idea. This is a perfect example of a favourite area of mine, where brands are using puzzles and games to engage customers, both existing (like Lufthansa) and to attract potential new ones. It’s more than blast advertising, it gives the customer a moment of interaction, a longer moment with the brand. The poster and print executions are anagrams, not hard, but enough for you to stop a moment. The website at the moment gives you the satisfaction of placing your piece, of contributing to the whole and leaving you with a question to draw you back. What is the picture? Where is it going? I’m pretty sure they would have got people doing the puzzle without the draw of the prize.
1441 days ago
[...] i wrote about the it in an earlier post, I asked a couple of the agencies involved in the Honda Joy of Problems campaign and the Problem [...]
Peter has made this ‘fact’ up in his own head. JD Power is the definitive industry owner satisfaction survey.
2007 results, as reported by What Car:
Honda Civic
Rating 83.4%
The Honda Civic is a consistently strong performer in this survey, and this is its third successive top-three finish in this class.
Scan the results table and you’ll find above-average ratings in every area, with the dealer service and vehicle exterior earning the very-good ratings. Quite simply, it didn’t put a foot wrong. Owners reported that mechanical problems were few and far between, the build quality good and the drive enjoyable. The cabin layout and styling got a thumbs-up, too.
Ref: http://www.whatcar.co.uk/news-special-report.aspx?NA=225557&EL=3196976
Peter, are Honda or anyone representing them active in those forums?
Great one Honda! Seeing as the new Civic is getting very well known in the automotive world for being a bit of a british built lemon and giving it’s onwers all sorts of problems in terms of faults and build quality, Honda are now advertising the fact!
1475 days ago
[...] should be the most joyous place about then! I’m saying nothing….. See here for an example and here for [...]
I had a quick think..and there’s not that many. There usual way to incorporate gaming is via a ‘viral’ game, of which there are many examples. They tend to be short, flash based, time wasting games that only touch on the brand premise at the edges.
Entertainment brands are the experts at this and it’s in this area you get the most and the largest range, from little viral flash games to large, complicated ARGs. This year I’ve seen Maccabbees and Nine Inch Nails, Dark Knight, Cloverfield, Torchwood, Spooks, Bourne Ultimatum and Pirates of the Caribbean all present something. It’s even spreading to book promotions, such as with Jasper Fforde. I like all of those.
The picture is different when it comes to product brands. The car industry does seem to be furthest along and produces some of the more interesting ones, the Art of the Heist being a classic example. This year Volvo got heavily involved with Pirates to do a 2 week online puzzle/treasure hunt.
Two new brands have been Covet Perfume and Guinness. Both tried to run something far closer to ARG, with different successes. Both of these were tied into TV ads. They’re setting examples for brands to follow. MacDonalds have been running successful promotions based on Monopoly on both sides of the Atlantic and they are getting to be more and more online. The other one I really liked last year was Wilkinson Sword, who produced a fully realised video game to download to your PC.
I’m seeing more and more of them, from brands that you would not have expected. But as it is something new, you are going to get a lot of failures as well. Honda’s track record is good for marketing, but I’m waiting for Feb 4th to see if they can follow through.
Rachel,
Great post on an intriguing campaign.
Can you share what you think are the best examples of where games have been integrated effectively with advertising? I think your point about the engagement value of this type of interactive communication is definitely right on.
Paul M. Banas