Were you aware that CNN now offers free online games? Games. On CNN. Yes, that CNN. I stumbled across them yesterday and was and am totally perplexed. A cable news channel is now hosting free online games. What’s up with that? Maybe this is just Jeff Zucker’s latest brain fart for how to save CNN. Kind of like how he saved NBC? Yeah, good luck with that.
These games are of course a come-on to advertising and thus something I predicted, i.e., that in order to compete in a world of growing distractions and saturated media, both TV and online advertisers would resort to actual creativity. We’ve seen it in Superbowl ads, in March Madness ads, and here the enticement is games. <a href="http://maureenholland.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/a-spoonful-of-sugar-for-a-grumpy-day-a-leave-me-alone-day-or-any-day/"<Moe Howard just posted a highly amusing video "film" which is actually an Evian commercial. Take a look if you haven’t seen it. Isn’t it amazing, though, that logic, reasoning, and details seem to be less effective in advertising than humor and cleverness? We’ve come a long way from dancing cigarette packages, eh?
Corrected link: http://maureenholland.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/a-spoonful-of-sugar-for-a-grumpy-day-a-leave-me-alone-day-or-any-day/
Outstanding ad! Best I’ve seen in a long time. My college major was Advertising Business, and one of the first things we were taught back then was that pretty women, babies, and animals sell. Nobody wants to watch cold, logical details, but truly clever material will get us talking. Those dancing cigarette packs were probably state-of-the-art back then, done by some of the biggest agencies in the country. (Not that big agencies guarantee success. Witness the horrendous Hyundai suicide ad where somebody — a lot of somebodies — got way too carried away with their own “cleverness.”)
What a great ad! Thanks Jim! 😀
I didn’t actually try any of those games PT, but they are the kind that I might actually play if I had the time! 😀
Yeah, I know. You and I are out and about so much. Hardly any time for games … 😉
I wondered if you’d catch that! 😆
But seriously, I’ve got emulations of a lot of my old favorites installed right on my PC. And yet I never seem to get around to playing them… 😕
Interesting…. I’m going to have to try them out. I don’t have a crossword puzzle loaded or bookmarked yet.
Some of them look like the sort of “busy work” I do to while watching TV. My version of knitting. Nothing as brain intensive as crossword puzzles.