Do the Cola Warriors Take Brand Immersion too Far?

I was checking out the terrific blog Ad Goodness where I saw a post on the Coke Zero Game. At the moment it’s only in German, although according to the developing agency North Kingdom, the English launch is eminent. 

Despite my non-existent German reading skills I did manage to stumble a little way into this game, and was struck by the similarity to DEWmocracy, Pepsi’s online experience on steroids (complete with a short film my Forrest Whitaker) from late last year, which sent the player on a mystic and spiritual quest to figure out what the next flavour of Mountain Dew will be.

Aside from this obviously being a product of the ever-brewing (pun intended) cola-wars which pre-date the lifetime of just about anyone who will read this, I wonder to what extent these kind of super-immersive experiences can scale to be a model for other kinds of brands. Coke also undertook an interesting effort in Second Life last year with the Virtual Thirst project, which I thought it was a brave and forward-thinking experiment that involved Coke sponsored virtual events and user generated content.

But these over-the-top games for Dew and Coke Zero make me wonder: can overt branded experiences cross the line of being more annoying and invasive and ultimately make consumers less sympathetic to the brand than a pre-roll video, a few banners, or the odd commercial break?

I’d love to hear what you think.

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