The Da Vinci Code Quest on Google
Google tied up with Columbia TriStar the makers of "The Da Vindi Code" movie for the marketing. They launched an online "Quest" for the general public which offered exciting prizes for the winners.
Spread over 24 days with one quest each day, the "challenging" quests consisted of mostly mind numbing activities. Answers were supposed to be found by Googling for them. Yes, that means getting more "targetted ads" thrown at you.
The term "subliminal marketing" crops up to mind, though in this case it was not so subtle.
When I did finish the last challenge, I was invited to register to win the prizes. The registration form involved disclosing my details including options to register for marketing material from their associated companies. WTF ??. All this quest rubbish to just make me sign up for junk mail. I surely expected something better than Google attempting to harvest more junk email victims under the guise of offering prizes ?.
After some investigation the rumour has it that the contest had not really ended, but the 1st 10,000 people who completed the challenge + the fastest ones, were invited to another "final" challenge to win "prizes".
Who knows what happened ? Google conned me..? Again ???
If I get a prize. I promise to be a loyal Google fan.
Spread over 24 days with one quest each day, the "challenging" quests consisted of mostly mind numbing activities. Answers were supposed to be found by Googling for them. Yes, that means getting more "targetted ads" thrown at you.
The term "subliminal marketing" crops up to mind, though in this case it was not so subtle.
When I did finish the last challenge, I was invited to register to win the prizes. The registration form involved disclosing my details including options to register for marketing material from their associated companies. WTF ??. All this quest rubbish to just make me sign up for junk mail. I surely expected something better than Google attempting to harvest more junk email victims under the guise of offering prizes ?.
After some investigation the rumour has it that the contest had not really ended, but the 1st 10,000 people who completed the challenge + the fastest ones, were invited to another "final" challenge to win "prizes".
Who knows what happened ? Google conned me..? Again ???
If I get a prize. I promise to be a loyal Google fan.
posted by FunkiBluDawg at 2:51 AM
2 Comments:
Did you read the rules?
The 24 puzzles are just phase one. The first 10,000 entries received after 1pm EDT yesterday get into the final phase. I managed to submit at 1:08 EDT (delayed by a meeting). They'll tell us May 15th if we've made it into the final phase.
Then you receive a Cryptex that contains a scroll that tells you how to access the last five puzzles. The winner is the one that solves these in the shortest time.
Check out my blog to see if I've made it through.
I think the rules are different depending on which side of pond you are.
http://sparkofnagpur.blogspot.com/2006/05/so-dark-con-of-google.html
Post a Comment
<< Home