The Web Strategist had an interesting article about the mysterious BMW - Britsh Motor Sports advertising campaign which will go online sometime in the near distant future. At the moment, the campaign consists only of flash graphics and mystery which are causing quite a stir with Digg.com users.

The BMW flash video morphs and shows some very vague products ready to be released in mid January.

Can you help Mister Reach solve the mystery? Like something out of a Scooby Doo movie, Johnson and Johnson and Reach Toothbrush have a new online interactive website ‘mystery game’ with Mr. Reach. The game is called ‘The Mouth of Mystery’. You can play the game at the Fuel Games website.

By the way, what the hell is with Mr. Reach’s tounge? Is my tounge really going to get the freaking big from brushing my teeth? What are these advertisers trying to convey. Is there a ’sexual implication’ behind the Mr. Reach character?

Anthony Sullivan, Matthew Lesko, and Tony Little star in ‘Informercial Madness’to promote MSN search. The online game/flash website is incredibly vibrant and makes you believe you are playing candy land with the informercial rejects. The website has random video commercials, product contests & prizes, and everything you click pops up randomly. Aside from that, a pretty horrible marketing turn for the infomercial folks and MSN Search.

“Matthew Lesko is here to screw up your search results!” (whiney Lesko impersonation).

Is that Mario and Luigi (chinese versions) I see? These little guys won’t be jumping out of plumbing pipes for you nor do they enjoy mushrooms to ‘make it to another level’. The dastardly duo are part of an Altoids campaign game in which you place packages of ‘toids against other packages to make transformations. It was a pretty boring game and the music blew but check it out if you’d like. Altoids Game

Yahoo points out that Mochi Media has created a new advertising network that will allow for the insertion of dynamic rotating ads to be placed in online games. The advertisements will work like Google Adwords with the highest paying bidder per game type or genre of games. The ads will be displayed prior to the start of the game in the loading screens (typically last 3 - 30 seconds at most). Mochi Media will serve ads regardless of where the site is hosted at for the game. Let’s hope this works out for online advertising and we continue to see an uprising of the internet and marketing online.

Anshe Chung has become the first online virtual millionaire by selling real estate. Her precious islands and private communities have created so much wealth that she has convered it into over $1 million US dollars.

Anshe Chung began by making large amounts of purely virtual money on MMORPGs such as Asheron’s Call, Star Wars Galaxies and Shadowbane that she didn’t convert into real money. However, this changed when she entered Second Life, a virtual world MMORPG in which the in-game currency, “Linden Dollars”, can be ‘officially’ exchanged for real money. Players of Second Life can also buy areas of game land, for either in-game or real money. Anshe Chung earned an initial stake by selling custom avatar animations when these were a new feature of Second Life, and using this money she successfully became involved in the emerging market for land. Anshe Chung now owns several full servers worth of land, most of which are sold to other users.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck of The View and Procter and Gamble’s heartburn medication Prilosec have teamed up to bring fantasy football leagues to women. The female fantasy league, HerFootball.com, kicked off at the begining of the football season but was left in the dust until Friday when P&G made the announcement.

The View’s Elisabeth Hasselback will not be promoting the web site on The View. Caffeine Marketing believes that her marriage to New York Giant’s Tim Hasselback caused her to become involved in some way. The good part about HerFootball is that Prilosec will be donating $1 the the National Breast Cancer Foundation up to $50,000 and give out free product samples.

Mental Floss magazine has developed a new game you can play. The object of the game is to guess which corporate logo’s are real and which have been altered. The recognizable corporate logos are switched around in ten different color combinations. The answers to the corporate logo game are on the bottom of the page. It’s interesting how branding works and how we find it easy to remember the outline of a corporate logo but not the color combinations.

Protrade, to promote the launch of its online sports marketplace hired Pod Digital Design to create Mascot Kombat. A knock off of the fighting game Mortal Kombat, the game features a team of mascosts who fight it out on a football field, basketball court, and tailgate party. The mascosts bleed team colors and you can knock each other senseless. It’s a really fun game but awful hard. Much apprection to Protrade for hiring well trained designers for this online promotional game.

The SpringHill Suites has this new Boogie Down game on their website which they’ve linked in with a few television ad spots and print ad spots around my area. I played the game today and it reminded me a little of an advanced version of the ‘Dancing Baby’ more than anything. What I’m trying to say is that the game gave me a couple of good laughs but after waiting through a loading screen that last OVER A MINUTE (strange these days), I was about ready to leave. The graphics are good and all but the business guy pisses me off when you mess up and he will yawn and rub his stomach at you. Nonetheless, the game is worth checking out. Nice job Mariott!

Volkswagen recently rolled out a new interactive website that truely puts the funk back into the Jetta, GTI, Beetle, and Rabbit. Promotional agency Crispin created a website that allows VW owners and potential buyers create their own sheet music. Musician novices need not worry as the “V-Dubs Rock” website contains everything a novice needs to strum out a new beat. The site provides a instrumental and mechanical breakdown how-to video featuring Dweezil Zappa and seasoned music vet’s can share the spotlight by recording their very own “GarageMaster” music videos and upload them to the site as part of the VW online battle of the bands.

The weekend is all but too far away and the best thing to do right now is kick back and play a little psychology and photography game. Developed by Getty Images, the Gestalt game features archived Getty pictures which have been transformed into ink blots. The game is pretty interesting and difficult. You have to match up an ink blot (which can be rotated) with an picture on the other side of the screen. The game is beautifully created in flash and in high resolution too.