Virgin Mobile Base Jump Game Offers Tiks to V Festival

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Virgin Mobile, which sponsors the UK's Virgin Mobile V Festival, is offering a chance to attend the sold out event with a base jumping game. If you land on the tour bus, you are able to enter a drawing for a pair of tickets. We made it on the third try but we're not flying to England just for a concert. The game is simple enough and unfettered by bloat which, of course, we like.

by Steve Hall    Jul-28-06    
Topic: Games, Good, Online, Promotions



In-Game Ad Ratings System Announced

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In-game advertising company IGA Worldwide and Interpret LLC have announced an in-game ad ratings system using Interpret's Gameasure. Gameasure will provide advertisers such game title, demographics, reach, frequency, duration and deoth of engagement metrics for all of IGA's video games. Ideally, it will best what Nielsen is trying to do for television now and actually provide real ad viewership and interaction data.

by Steve Hall    Jul-20-06    
Topic: Games, Good, Online, Research, Tools



Verizon Beatbox Unleashes Dunkin' Frustration

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Sort of like creating a Honda Choir spot on your own, Verizon has launched Beatbox Mixer, a site, created by R/GA, that lets you combine various beatbox clips along with videos of the artists "performing" to support Verizon's "Richer, Deeper, Broader" broadband push. If one is so inclined, one can use the site's tools to create a customized, full blown sound and video extravaganza to play for one's grandmother who will then look at said creator like some sort of gastrointestinal alien was emanating from the bowels of said creator's stomach and quickly call the ambulance thereby calling into question the purpose for creating the thing in the first place.

WTF? Where did that whole grandma thing come from? Who writes this crap? Anyway, we're sure this will appeal the the creative types out there who assume they, like Ashlee Simpson, can slide into fame's limelight on the coat tails of other's talent. And whoa! Where did that nastiness come from? Hmm. Oh wait. It must have been that morning trip to Dunkin where we had our "America Runs on Dunkin" latte and were C blocked from angling our way into a conversation with the beautiful, tiny but oh-so-plentiful up top beauty standing next to us in line.

by Steve Hall    Jul-20-06    
Topic: Games, Good, Online, Promotions



Site Helps Ladies Learn How to Tease Guys

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Seriously. No, seriously. Ignore that rollerbabe because this one's for the ladies. This is not another gratuitous attempt from a marketer to turn humans into receptacles for lust just to sell a product. Nope. This site, created by UK agency Outside Line we're told, is special. It doesn't feature the phallic-shaped product every time a page loads. It doesn't slather on the saucy language and offer cutesy teasing advice, it doesn't have a game with crappy navigation that makes sure the whole notion of teasing is reinforced and it doesn't have a section that features beefy, not completely clothed hunks as eye candy.

by Steve Hall    Jul-17-06    
Topic: Games, Online



Candystand Debuts Monster Truck Game

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Keeping up the action on its Candystand site, WM. Wrigley Jr. Company has released a new advergame created by Stimunation. The game is called Monster Trucks and you get to brand your truck and drive it over all kinds of obstacles and, best of all, crash it. Mmm. Going out to buy some Lifesavers now.

by Steve Hall    Jul- 2-06    
Topic: Games, Good, Online



Professional Bull Riders Is Not PBR

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If we were writing a press release for our client Amp'd Mobile and we were talking about how the company was the official sponsor of the Professional Bull Riders and the client would be simalcasting events to Amp'd Mobile customers, we probobly wouldn't refer to the Professional Bull Riders Association as PBR unless the sponsorship also involved the actual PBR - Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Even if the client insisted. Just a thought.

by Steve Hall    Jun-27-06    
Topic: Bad, Events, Games, Mobile/Wireless, Online



TJ From Sonic Wants You to Make His Favorite Drink

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For you Sonic lovers, here's a website you can spend hours with trying to guess the favorite drink of TJ, one of the guys from the Two Guys campaign.. The site let's you mix various flavors with a possible 168,894 combinations. If you guess which on is the favorite, prizes abound. Well, at least a coupon to use at Sonic. We whipped up a few but TJ didn't like. Kansas city based Barkley Evergreen & Partners did the work.

by Steve Hall    Jun-26-06    
Topic: Games, Good, Online



Virtual Tomato Toss Somehow Sells Telecom

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We're told this is a viral campaign but we'll have to take the sender's word for it because the whole thing is in French. Along with a bunch of videos, there's a game which let's you hurl tomatoes at fellow office workers and that appears to be amusing enough at least for a few minutes. Apparently, it's all for French telecom company SFR. Oh, we get it now. It's tomato telecom. Oh wait, that only works in English, right?

by Steve Hall    Jun-26-06    
Topic: Games, Online



Advergame Access Annoys, Doesn't Get Played

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We're all for fun little advergame time wasters but when you have to a.) tell the company whether you are male or female, b.) have a password, c.) or don't have the password and enter your email to get it and d.) go open the email they sent you to get the password, the whole thing becomes work. Advergames aren't supposed to be work. They're supposed to be a branded distraction, not a challenge to see how much annoyance you can take before you just say "screw it" and leave which is exactly what we did. So, if any of you actually plays this game, let us know if we should bother looking for that email with the password.

by Steve Hall    Jun-21-06    
Topic: Bad, Games, Online, Opinion



Fingering Bikini-Clad Hotties Yields Sundown Song

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Adrants reader John Brock sent us this link to Oooooouch.com. Yes, that's six O's. It leads to a site on which eight beach babes laying on towels and wearing various bikinis are waiting for you to touch them. You soon realize touching them in a certain order creates a song. Yes. Fingering them with the mouse makes them squeal. Who knew? Anyway, it's for Sundown sunscreen and was created by DDB Brazil. Figures. Capital of the bootie. Our favorite "note" is the second from the right.

by Steve Hall    Jun-20-06    
Topic: Games, Online, Viral