Advertisers are forever concocting new means of consumer titillation. One new method is branded interactive gaming delivered either online or via email, an avenue that boasts quantifiable results, reaches a specific audience and meaningfully engages a consumer base.

Two such advertisers taking their messages online are Maxim Magazine Just For Men Hair Color and Kingworld, a division of CBS. Seeking a way to further solidify their brand messages, these clients sought out what their target audience would respond to and went for the jugular.

HOTTIES FOR HAIR COLOR

When hair color company Combe Inc. wanted to hipify its Just for Men hair color and reach a younger male demo, it found an image partner in Maxim Magazine, who licensed its name to the hair color.

To market the product, Combe commissioned an online game from Comedy Central (CC) to be promoted on comedycentral.com. CC came up with the Maxim Player Generator Game, which has players choose clothes, hairstyle, pick-up line and, of course, hair color.

"Maxim is a powerful brand for young men today, so it seemed like a good partnership for this new business," says Combe Inc. director of interactive communications Tom Cunniff. "This was an opportunity for us to reach our audience where they are - on the Internet."

The game, which ran for six weeks on CC's website in the early fall, is a Flash movie wherein the main dude, Craig, is on the quest to pick up chicks. The perfect combo of hairstyle and color, clothes and pick-up line will score him a dame, the wrong mix gets him a drink in the face or an acerbic dis. Either outcome ends with a chance to enter the Maxim sweepstakes.

"This game captured what the client wanted by displaying the hair colors, and it captured the Comedy Central personality," says CC VP of digital media Beth Lewand.

The game was designed, scripted and voiced by LA's Unbound Studios. Brennan Lindner of Unbound says he opted for a clean, sexy retro '20s look for the animated game. "We pushed the sexuality of it because the target market was CC and Maxim Magazine," says Lindner.

The game was created over six weeks, and while Lindner says a project of this caliber would normally run about $20,000 US, Unbound cut CC a deal of around $10,000 to land the job.

"We immediately had a few thousand players a day," Lewand says. "Gaming is popular on our site, it's something that our audience comes for." Indeed, CC games get over a million plays a month.

"CC dot com is good at directing traffic," says the network's VP of interactive sales Glenn Ginsburg. The Player Generator vastly out-performed other CC games: it had a 15% click-through compared to the average 1.5% rate.

OUR NEXT CONTESTANT IS...

Viewers of Kingworld's show Hollywood Squares were targeted online with an email game designed by LA-based Whitespeed. Kingworld wanted to reach its viewers with information on upcoming shows, so considering Kingworld's focus is on game show programming, a game and contest embedded in an email made sense.