If you play the Coin Killer Game on the Canadian No Country for Old Men website, odds are you will be treated to a special view of your own dead head.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada (IAB) announced last March that 2006 Canadian Online Advertising Revenues have surged to an unprecedented $1.01 billion dollars for the year. The 2006 actuals represent a 26% increase over the $801 million originally estimated by the IAB for 2006; and an 80% increase over the 2005 actuals of $562 million.
Advertisers who ignore the power of the internet are being left behind as more consumers shop online for ‘better value’ goods and services. Look at the film business and let me ask you a simple question, ‘do movies with attractive websites do bigger box office?’ The answer is yes.
Web sites help movies attract new viewers. The rise of group discussion forums like Rotten Tomatoes, Movie Spot, and Metacritic now allow people unprecedented access to movie reviews and film trailers. Statistics show that over 60% of theater patrons know the major plot details before they venture out to the cinema to watch the movie. Websites that proffer show times and movie schedules are invariably connected to each film’s official website. A rising percentage of cinema goers watch trailers online for clues to the film’s quality. The host site should be as informative as possible and contain links to cast and crew bios, and ‘behind the scenes’ media.
Marketing movies is a strange business all over the planet. It's no secret that advertising executives are just as creative as filmmakers, and probably more down to earth about the reality of their industry – they know it’s all just an illusion; the difference between a Blockbuster and a Bomb is as intangible as the stories themselves.
What happens if movies don’t advertise online? Just last week Lions Gate Entertainment Corp reported a deep second quarter loss due to higher (print and TV) advertising costs in the spring and summer of 2007. And really it’s no wonder – the studio spent upwards of $122.5 million dollars promoting their cinematic products ‘Saw IV’, and ‘Good Luck Chuck’.
Saw IV’s opening weekend brought in a whooping $31,756,764, and has achieved $84,123,903 in worldwide box office sales. Good Luck Chuck did $13,652,001 on its opening weekend and $39,671,008 in worldwide box office sales after that. But their old school television and print media campaign ate up all the profits! Could they have done a better job more economically online – again, the answer is yes.
Social marketing is about to revolutionize online advertising. Right now most people over the age of forty don’t know the meaning of the words ‘Social Media Optimization’ and they don’t understand how inexpensive, and yet how effective such promotion can be inside a dynamic online advertising campaign. Young executives have a hard time explaining to their superiors exactly how they will succeed in the shadowy world of online chat rooms, blogs and discussion forums.
The ‘Coin Killer Game’ is an interactive solution to a viral marketing challenge posed by most anticipated release of 2007, the new Coen brothers movie, No Country for Old Men.
This attraction is being hailed as the best piece of filmmaking ever evidenced by the cinematic siblings - its certain to be a ‘must-see’ movie for millions of devoted fans. In this film, a compressed air tank welding villain played by Javier Bardem asks a gas station attendant ‘How much have you ever wagered in a coin toss?’. The same dialogue has been preserved online in the opening frames of the Coin Killer Game.
After uploading a personal photo, each visitor must click the ‘flip this coin’ prompt and watch as an American quarter rotates up above the banner, where it disappears… The user is asked to chose ‘Heads or Tails?’
This exciting challenge ends with each visitor ultimately losing the match, and then watching in horror as his or her personal photo becomes a ‘death portrait’.
The game imagines the player's death portrait and simulates what each face would look like after being struck by the villain’s signature weapon. Check out the author’s own face after the gruesome attack.
The Coin Killer Game is the next evolution of online marketing; already a facebook widget, this application is almost certain to convey tens of thousands of unique viewers to the No Country for Old Men site before the campaign ends in late November.



































