Jeep swaps car-wash for brand-wash
Is nothing sacred? Seemingly not. Every Diginative's favourite childhood movie, The Goonies, has been brand-washed by Jeep.
The Jeep/Goonies advergame takes pride of place on a fancy-looking microsite. But as the old saying goes, looks ain't everything. The first level of the game requires the player to drive round (and round, and round) in a jeep doing not very much. I ran out of time and - shock horror - opted not to 'play again'.
There's also a cringe-worthy trailor for the game featuring... well, Jeep, for the most part. Good job I didn't watch it until after I played the game. Or maybe bad job - that trailor could have saved me the 5 minutes I spent 'engaging' with the Jeep brand (for 'engaging', read 'learning to hate').
A couple of basic-but-golden rules for branded content: (1) make sure the content doesn't disappoint, i.e. make it funny/sexy/challenging/useful/something other than dull (2) take a brands-off approach, plumping for relevence and depth of engagement over explicit branding.
Jeep scores 0 out of 2 in my books.
No doubt Jeep's agency thought reaching Diginatives by combining their favourite film property (The Goonies) and their favourite media platform (online) was an easy win. But playing around with people's favourite things is a dangerous game. The result of that game may well be a shock defeat, unless your average Goonies fan has superior advergame skillz to yours truly (quite likely) and a penchant for heavy branding (less likely).
The Jeep/Goonies advergame takes pride of place on a fancy-looking microsite. But as the old saying goes, looks ain't everything. The first level of the game requires the player to drive round (and round, and round) in a jeep doing not very much. I ran out of time and - shock horror - opted not to 'play again'.
There's also a cringe-worthy trailor for the game featuring... well, Jeep, for the most part. Good job I didn't watch it until after I played the game. Or maybe bad job - that trailor could have saved me the 5 minutes I spent 'engaging' with the Jeep brand (for 'engaging', read 'learning to hate').
A couple of basic-but-golden rules for branded content: (1) make sure the content doesn't disappoint, i.e. make it funny/sexy/challenging/useful/something other than dull (2) take a brands-off approach, plumping for relevence and depth of engagement over explicit branding.
Jeep scores 0 out of 2 in my books.
No doubt Jeep's agency thought reaching Diginatives by combining their favourite film property (The Goonies) and their favourite media platform (online) was an easy win. But playing around with people's favourite things is a dangerous game. The result of that game may well be a shock defeat, unless your average Goonies fan has superior advergame skillz to yours truly (quite likely) and a penchant for heavy branding (less likely).
