Finovate Blog

If you watched any U.S. Open tennis over the holiday weekend, you couldn't miss the American Express tie-ins. My favorite commercial showed Andy Roddick exchanging ground strokes with a white bar designed to look like the early video game, Pong. It has nostalgic appeal to younger baby boomers who played the orginal Atari game in the late 1970s, and it was funny enough to get the attention of younger consumers.

The commercial ended with a tie-in to a special website, <stoppong.com>, where the game can be played online. It's much like the original, not surprising given the site was built by Atari Interactive. With the mouse, the user operates Roddick who bats the ball back to the white bar. Like the original, the game speeds up the longer the ball stays in play. In a modern twist, you can choose either 3-D or 2-D version. The top 100 scores are listed to help stoke the competitive spirit.

Analysis
Overall, it's a good campaign with engaging broadcast advertising driving customers to a good website with viral hooks. We do have a few suggestions:

1. Add Google support: The first step for the majority of Internet users will be to enter "stop pong" or something similar into Google. Luckily, the Stop Pong microsite is in first position in the organic results, so it's relatively easy to find. However, numerous first-page blog-listings could snag the traffic before they ever get to the genuine site. American Express should support the expensive campaign with a relatively inexpensive Google AdWords buy on the relevant terms, "American Express Roddick," "American Express pong," "stop pong" and so on.  On a 10-point scale, the company is docked half a point for this.
2. Personalize it: There should be some way for users to add their name to be shown on the screen during play. Even more important, it should track each user's high score during the session.
3. Grab leads: In addition to personalization, users should have the option of saving their high score(s) by registering with a username, password, and valid email address. Give registrants the ability to opt-in for future marketing messages.
4. Make it viral: Offering the HTML code in the lower left is a good viral marketing move. An even better one, because anyone can do it, is to provide an email-your-friend option. Even better: allow friends to email their scores to others as a challenge.
5. Offer player rewards: Another way to increase word-of-mouth is to offer prizes, not for scoring high, which might run afoul of gaming regulations, but at random simply for playing the game. 
6. Allow the sound to be turned off (on screen): Obviously the designers have never worked in a "real office" where the sound of a pong game coming out of your cubicle is not exactly what the boss had in mind when he/she asked you to "serve up some ideas for the next project meeting." Whenever you add audio to your website, make sure you have a visible on-screen mute button.
7. Support the campaign on landing pages: Neither of the landing pages accessible through the microsite are customized for the Pong campaign. However, the main "My Life. My Card" page <mylifemycard.com>  (see screenshot by clicking "continue" below), reached by clicking on the banner in the upper left, includes "play pong" superimposed on a small picture of Roddick. But the main clickthrough spot, the banner in the lower right, leads to the regular "My Life. My Card" selector tool with no mention of Pong, tennis, or the U.S. Open.

Overall Grade
Even though we think American Express could do a better job capturing leads, it's probably better to err on the side of a too-soft sell instead of too-hard, especially if the goal is to have the online game grow virally thorough blog and other media mentions.   

We'll give it an A for creative and B+ for execution.

—JB

Appendix
Here's the main "My Life. My Card" site reached by clicking on the logo in the upper left of the Stop Pong site:

Here's the card selector reached from the banner in the lower right of the Stop Pong page: