In Fight (draft proposal)
Spinning off Jorge's idea. I think it would be great if we could make poll-based advertisement-games on public video displays like the Time Square display. What I'd propose is not just a simple framework for a game, but a whole interactive marketing scheme. Something I'd like to call the "IN Fight."
"IN Fight" is much like the "hotornot.com" website but designed for pop culture and used on public displays. The IN Fight basically pits pop culture icons against each other in a local popularity contest in Times Square.
On the Times Square NBC Screen, an advertisement would be displayed in between programming segments to prompt pedestrians to nominate a pop culture icons to participate in IN Fight via text messaging. For example the ad may ask to complete the sentence "_____ is IN." and send the answer to a certain SMS number. This is how participants nominate their pop culture icon to be in the IN Fight tournament.
Almost any person or thing can be nominated as long as it exists in a predetermined database of pop culture icons. For example I can nominate Tom Cruise, Michael Jackson, Apple, Windows, Coke, or Pepsi, but I probably couldn't nominate my next door neighbor, unless he or she was a household name. After two pop icons are chosen, another ad is shown later pitting one icon against the other. The ad would simple show the picture of one pop icon versus the picture of the other icon. It would also show the icon's name and corresponding voting number. The ad will then ask pedestrians at Times Square to vote for one icon or the other. The scope and length of the poll should be short enough such that pedestrians can see the results of the poll within 15 minutes in a later ad. The winner would continue on to the next round in the tournament. The tournament would continue up until late evening, where the reigning icon will claim the title "Pop icon of the day." Then the tournament would be restarted for the next day. The winner of the tournament would also be displayed the following day.
To encourage recurrent participation, users could bet "fight points" on which pop icon would win the next street fight. "Fight points" are an arbitrary currency used in the game to bet in IN Fight. "Fight points" can be redeemed at local retail stores in Time Square for discounts on relevant products. So if I bet 50 "fight points" on 50 cent, and I win, then I can redeem the 50 fight points at the Virgin megastore for a $0.50 discount on 50 cent album. No, that doesn't mean you get it for free. You just get $.50 off a rap album. Fun huh?
The scheduling of these ad work much like the sponsored trivia quizzes in Movie theaters, where the question would be posed in one slide and the answer would be posed 3-4 slides after.
And though I designed this scheme for the Times Square NBC screen as a platform, this scheme could also work across various other ad platforms, such as pre-movie ads, internet ads, and cable ads. And all active platforms could be connected to one centralized tournament server, such that users watching an internet ad can vote on the same tournament as users watching the Times Square ad.