i'm lovin' it

Caught this in the Times earlier this week: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/business/media/01adco.html?_r=1&ref=media&oref=slogin. When one thinks of leaders in cutting-edge marketing, McDonald's is not the likeliest of candidates. But they recently launched what's dubbed an "alternate reality game", in connection with the upcoming Beijing Olympics. The game takes place both online as well as offline, with physical clues left for players to find. There's some neat videos circulating on YouTube telling the initial pieces of the sci-fi driven story, and both the videos and the website sport pretty nifty production value. Other channels suck as Flickr and Twitter are used to make the experience more dynamic, with players having to criss-cross through several places on the web to solve the puzzles.

What's interesting is that the McDonald's branding takes a back seat way, way in the back. There's zero product placement in the trailers (at least not now, and one can only wonder how they'll finally incorporate images of happy meals in the context of this super serious, Stargate-lite narrative), and the golden arches are barely discernible on the website. And I don't fault them either: there's no way an "edgy" campaign like this would gain any credibility if the actors walked around munching on cheeseburgers. But I wonder at which point does something like this compel the player/viewer to take a specific commercial action in relation to McDonald's? My guess is that when the game culminates during the Beijing Olympics, there will be some global, humanitarian, feel-good message behind the "final answer" which McDonald's will try to play off of, not so much in the way of advertising a product, but more of a general brand-building exercice.

I personally love random stuff like this. At least McDonald's is taking risks here. But some of the numbers on this to date are mixed. The article mentioned that only 50 bloggers were targeted when the game was first pushed. And by last count, almost half a million people had watched the first trailer on YouTube, a seemingly impressive number. But trailers 2 and 3 have been viewed less than 1,000 times each, which indicates a lot of people just like me: curious about the buzz this game is getting, but not putting in the time and energy to actually engage in playing the game. But who knows, perhaps that's as good of a result as any: I've already thought more about McDonald's today than I have in months.