Monopoly World Edition is sweet.

This holiday season, my brother-in-law gave us the new Monopoly World Edition, the one with all the cities of the world voted by popularity.  (Note:  Canada has 3 cities on the board, while the United States has only one...)

The game is 99% similar to the Monopoly we all grew up with, barring the single exception of speed.  Well-- a few other things too, but the end result it speed.  

The new game has a debit card system and a 'bank' instead of the traditional cash and banker system.  Because of this, when there is a transaction, the two cards of the players involved are jammed in a little electronic device and within seconds, the funds are transferred.  This makes the game incredibly fast.  What used to take an entire weekend of elaborate and complex business strategy can now be rapidly executed after dinner.  The other thing with this game, and maybe it's just my poor memory from childhood, but it's essentially over as soon as you've developed hotels before the other players.  With rents higher than $10mil M (monopoly dollars) in some cases, you can bankrupt a player with a single unlucky roll.  (to put this in perspective, remember Baltic Ave?  The terrible purple property near GO?  That sells for $600k M, and is the cheapest property, whereas rent for landing on Montreal, which is the new Boardwalk, is enough to make you cry.

Maybe they did the math, did some focus groups, and found the single biggest obstacle to more popularity was the time it takes to play a game.  They made the prices escalate in such a way that if you're not lucky with the first few rounds of the board, and someone develops before you, you may have cash, but you'll be bankrupt very quickly.  At every turn there were reminders of the U.S. credit cruch, as you mortgage a property to afford a house on another property, only to mortgage that to pay rent when you land on another players house...  

The only other major change is the Free Parking.  Remember when you'd land on free parking and get the money in the middle?  That's not happening anymore.  Free parking does nothing.

All Wrapped Up in Online Voting for Charity

TORONTO (December 18, 2008)- Holiday gift-wrapping: love it or hate it, you have to
join the 133,000 Canadians to view the latest online sensation that makes this seasonal exercise fun and results in a big win for a local charity.

[Digg, Reddit, Facebook Page, Youtube]

Direct Antidote, a full-service loyalty agency, is making giving to charity a competitive sport with the First Annual Extreme Wrapping Challenge. Nine teams, made up of Direct Antidote’s entire staff, took their holiday wrapping frustration out on fellow team members by using them to construct masterpiece of paper, ribbons, and bows.

Each team, representing a charity, decided upon a theme and brought it to life. The
charities being represented are: Kids Help Phone, The Salvation Army, Special Olympics Canada, The Canadian Diabetes Association, World Wildlife Fund, The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, CHUMCity Christmas Wish, The Heart and Stroke Foundation, and The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada. The weeklong creation process was captured on film and is accessible by visiting http://www.extremewrapping.com/. Anyone can visit the website and watch the “making of” videos for a good laugh. They are then encouraged to vote early and vote often for their favorite creation and/or charity through January 6, 2009. Direct Antidote will donate $2,500. to the winning charity.

“Every year Direct Antidote uses the holiday season as an excuse to do what we do best and really get creative,” explains Di Cullen, managing director of Direct Antidote. “Instead of sending out holiday cards, we like to do something a bit more interactive. This year, we decided to not only up the fun factor but actually do it all for a good cause.”

What started out as a fun break from the stress of work during the holiday season has
now gone viral. When someone votes, they are asked to invite friends to help judge.
Direct Antidote even created a Facebook fan page so people can share their favorite
extreme wrapping creation with anyone in view of their news feed. For those obsessed
with YouTube, all of the videos are also posted on the popular video-sharing site.
All of these tactics seem to be working. The site launched on December 11th and as of
December 18th, there were 133,921 total votes. That means roughly 19 people are voting every minute. Festive Fashionistas, benefitting The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation has taken the lead with Delicate Delight, on behalf of the World Wildlife Fund, at a very close second.

“We’re so thrilled with the number of votes coming in that we decided to extend the
deadline,” says Direct Antidote’s Executive Creative Director Meghan LaBonge. “It’s
clear that everyone needs a little laugh every once in a while.”

NOTE:  The simple things we did to spread the word about this charity, in addition to the B2B press and corporate communications work:  A social bookmarking button was added to the flash only site, a facebook page created, and the link was Dugg and Reddit and Stumbled.  The raw videos were also uploaded to Youtube for people to embed on their own sites.

What a waste. Starbucks double wrap metro cover.

This morning I was delighted to be presented with something noteworthy to write about.  Metro, Toronto's daily commuter paper, had a double-wrap cover, with one of the pages being an onion-skin/vellum type 'see through' material, revealing the Starbucks logo below.

Why?

Yes it's moderately clever, but what you gained by getting my attention, you lost by being so completely wasteful.  You also presented no call to action or value for me.  No line about the new candy-cane crack-a-chino, or even the Campaign (RED) that they were actually promoting, or what that's all about...  No, this was blatant awareness marketing, and frankly, if you're not aware of Starbucks in Toronto, you're in a coma.

How about a coupon?  "Use this coupon and $1 of this over-priced coffee will go to charity".  There is also a huge disconnect for me between Campaign (RED) and fighting AIDS.  Starbucks doesn't want to talk about AIDS, so they talk about (RED) but at some point, you have to think about millions of people dying to make the marketing work?