The Ultimate Battle of the Cheese Flavored Snacks Has Begun!
Friday, July 16th, 2010Frito Lay’s Cheetos have launched an ambitious new online campaign that is surprisingly very effective. It is entertaining, engaging, and very impressive considering it is a viral game centered around cheese flavored snack products.
In their campaign titled “Battle of the Cheetos” users pick a side; crunchy or puffy and do battle with other users online. It is a strategy war game where animated Cheetos fight with cheese-powered weapons to determine the superior type of Cheeto. As players win more battles they are rewarded with upgrades and more Cheeto warriors for your regiment.
The animated battlefields spring from partnered websites from which the viral game is accessed, including Mashable, Gawker, BoingBoing.net, Gizmodo, and many others. Statistics can be tracked via Facebook to determine which users are the most skilled generals for both the puffy and crunchy armies. The gameplay is simple yet engaging and like all great online multiplayer games, it allows users to taunt their opponents and trash talk via their computer’s microphone. This imaginative campaign may seem like a very strange way to promote and sell Cheetos but it is already doing an excellent job if you consider the content and depth of the game. Consumers spend an average of 12 minutes playing branded games, much longer than they would with any traditional form of advertising, also consider the Facebook connectivity and the fact that this branded game is actually quite fun to play; the Battle of the Cheetos is an impressive campaign that manages to entertain players centered entirely around the Cheetos brand. It is easily the best branded online game I have experienced and will hopefully set the tone for all branded game content that will follow.
