Sponsorship, You're doin' it gr8, and not sew gr8 acksually.

I've posted previously about my favorite Lolcat site, icanhascheezburger.com. For those of you who may not know (or have been living under a rock for like 2 years) a Lolcat is an enduring meme which features a picture of a cat with a humorously misspelled caption. I posted one here. Anyhow, icanhascheezburger is a very popular site with over 1 million unique visitors per month, so it's small wonder that they are trying to monetize some of their efforts.

Just this week, I've seen two different attempts, one that seems to have generated very positive feedback and one, not so much actually.

The first to appear was a game sponsored by Walmart and Iams. The game is actually quite cute, albeit very simple. The Lolcat is maneuvered around to pick up the pieces of cat food (kibble).




There are a few problems though. One is that every cheezpeep (the denizens of the site) knows, cats won't make much effort to eat anything that is not canned (gushifuds or toona). The other more serious problem is that a lot of pet lovers have big problems with Walmart, Iams and Proctor and Gamble for perceived poor practices in animal testing for their products.



Whether or not these perceptions are accurate or justified, the game spawned a spate of nasty comments, resulting in the moderators closing the comments down after only 22 comments. (On a really popular picture comments can reach over 300.) So the comments are negative, and many of the cheezpeeps felt that their beloved site "sold out" to the animal-abusing mega mart. Not so gr8 actually.



However just today, I saw a much better example of integrated advertising/entertainment on the same site. The site is now hosting a "rawr" contest where viewers can submit their favorite "rawr" pictures (depicting kittys roaring like a lion) to promote the upcoming "Land of the Lost" movie. The winner gets a Blu-ray player and a seven Will Ferrell movies on Blu-ray.





Although there is a bit of confusion about the rules (and jokes about how the second prize is 20 Blu-ray discs starring Will Ferrell) the response is much more positive. Undoubtedly this is due in part to the fact that the "Rawr" is a very popular meme that originated with the site.



Users get to participate in a very natural way through the preexisting channels, and users feel like the contest "belongs" to them. Naturally, the comments were much happier and folks are jumping to respond.



So, what can we learn here?
1. If you're going to offer branded entertainment in an online space with a public forum, make sure you don't have a big red target taped to your butt.
2. If possible, make something that engages the participants in a creative way.
3. Make sure your "contest" feels natural for the space.

Just a few observations by the One
ID Man.