Tribal DDB Amsterdam have just launched this new advergame for the Volkswagen Polo, it’s a top-down 2D game with 3D elements where you drive the new polo around collecting items for good and bad. Unfortunately it’s completely in Dutch, and even though half my family is from Holland, I don’t have a clue what this game is saying or indeed about! (although it drives like a tank until you pickup some random power-up boxes – perhaps the campaign is about how the new polo is no longer a tank? It’s always been a small car – so that doesn’t even make sense!)
But what I do know is that the old retro style European maps are very cool. So check out the game here and see if you can make sense of it, hopefully one of the Tribal guys will comment with a quick translation into English to put it into perspective! (Thanks Mike!)
Hey Aden,
Thanks for the post! To help clarify the Dutchness here a bit:
The new VW Polo is a very fuel-efficient car. To illustrate, it can be easily driven from Amsterdam to Milan on one tank of fuel. It’s so economic in fact, that you’d be hard pressed to use up your tank even doing that, so the challenge in this game is to drive a Polo over the route with the *least* amount of fuel remaining in your tank.
On the way, the “driver” learns how various choices on the trip (in their driving behaviour, how they solve commmon highway problems, how they load the vehicle etc) affect fuel economy. A little twist on the clichéd approaches to communicating fuel economy by “saving money” or “being greener”.
We scored a whole stash of old 1960s Euro roadmaps from Ebay, which were great as inspiration for helping humanise a fairly practical subject.
Aden!
I ain’t Dutch at all but one look at the game and I knew it was about fuel efficiency! Good game I love the use of landmarks to denote cities and very realistic game play!
Great idea Mike! Good going Tribal DDB!
There’s a lot of speculation on how to make advergames appealing I think this is an excellent example,btw Mike did you’ll consider making this as a FB game application to reach a wider audience?
How did you’ll promote it?
Tyrone
Tyrone,
Yes you got me there. Dare I say late night posting at 1am is not a good thing, it’s far too easy to completely miss the core idea, even with those (now I see them) gauges measuring fuel! haha.
Thanks for the comment!