Creative Showcase: Big Foot & Beef Jerky

Firefox compatible

Client: Jack Link's Beef Jerky
Creative Agency: Xylem Interactive

The Messin' with Sasquatch microsite was designed as an interactive complement to support the Jack Links national advertising campaign. The campaign centers on five television commercials featuring pranks on Sasquatch (aka Big Foot). The microsite is designed to keep web users on the site longer, and further build brand awareness by effectively drawing users to interact with a recognizable, fun and memorable brand identity.

The microsite begins to establish a long-term introduction to Sasquatch's personality through access to his personal journal and link to his MySpace personal page, where he's perceived as funny, irreverent, clever and worldly. Users can also download Sasquatch to their computer with a number of desktop wallpapers that are available on the microsite.

The process was truly a collaborative effort... the microsite was developed in an amazingly short time frame, with less than a month from the initial brainstorm until the launch. Xylem Interactive received the business goals from Jack Links and their agency of record, then immediately started the planning and creative brainstorming process. Creative problem-solving was employed at all phases. For example, since everything was shot without interactive in mind, Xylem Interactive had to essentially pull Sasquatch apart and put him back together in order to breath life into him. Towards the end of our timeframe, we received the final videos and the site came together. 

The site exceeded the client's expectations. This was their first microsite, and consumer comments have been extremely positive. The "Don't Wake Sasquatch" game has been especially effective at keeping users on the site and interacting with the brand longer. As a testament to the strength of the site, Sasquatch's MySpace page links to nearly 4,000 "friends!" This is up from just one, Owl, when the site and MySpace page launched June 1st.

The Messin With Sasquatch microsite is a great demonstration of how offline media and online media can work together to produce new levels of advertising effectiveness and reinforce brand equity. Jack Link's spirit of having irreverent fun resonates with their customers throughout this entire campaign.

And this is still just an early phase… Xylem plans to add new games and other features to the microsite as the television campaign evolves.
-- John Gilbert, studio director, Xylem Interactive

Creative Showcase is meant to be a teaching tool and an inspiration for our readers. We comment only on creative that we really love. Our panelists discuss what makes it great, but if they feel there were missed opportunities that would have made it better, we invite them to mention those. And finally, we seek out a wide range of opinions that reflect the marketplace for the panel, in order to provide constructive, useable feedback for agencies, clients and others involved in these creative pieces.

First, I have to give it up to the developers for lifting me out of my chair when Sasquatch burst onto the screen after I lost the first game.
 
They did a good job in maintaining an overall simplicity to the game experience. I think that’s especially key for advergames, as players are about as likely to read the instructions as they are to read website privacy policies. 
 
Another big plus is that this game doesn’t drag on and on. There are few advergames in which I’d be willing to spend more than a couple minutes playing. Advergames can rarely, if ever, compete with the immersive qualities of full-scale video games, and they shouldn’t try to. Keeping the game simple and fast encourages repeated playing, which certainly helps brand retention.
 
I did think the premise of the game could have invoked a little more of the sense of humor found in the commercials. The spots have a funny prankster theme that the game didn’t hit on as strongly. Increasing that element would have made the game even more memorable.
 
However, I feel many ad games lose due to overreaching ambitions, and it was nice to see a simple game that gives the viewer a few minutes of brand escapism.
-- Doug Schumacher, president and creative director, Basement, Inc.

Xylem Interactive did a nice job of tying the Messin' with Sasquatch microsite to the TV commercials. The game, especially, kept to the theme, asking viewers to snag bags of Jack Links from around a sleeping Sasquatch without waking him. The game was simple, yet compelling enough to get the viewer to interact with it at least for a few minutes.

The MySpace page and profile for Sasquatch, although definitely amusing, seemed less of a fit. Maybe marketers feel it's a requirement these days to add a MySpace element if the intended audience is teens/young adults, but learning funny facts about the beast in the woods didn't lend anything more to the "feed your wild side" theme. Some sort of viral element that enables users to somehow play interactive pranks on their friends might have been more effective.
-- Dawn Anfuso, senior editor, iMedia Connection