Sony Mission for a Million

Sony are one of the brands associated with the new Bond Film, Quantum of Solace. They’re running a promotion with win a $1million in the US, through their site Mission for a Million, through a contest taking place over the next few weeks.

They’ve followed the model of many brands building a film promotion over the last few years (Volvo and Pirates of the Caribbean springs immediately to mind) by providing a game/puzzle based mechanism to get to the prize. This is pretty strightforward – successfully complete the weekly missions and get entries into the draw. Each mission will give you clips from the film and other promotional stuff.

Good in principle, but on evidence of the first mission it has to be one of the most clumsily branded I’ve seen of this genre. Well, not sure of clumsily is the right word, but definitely, obviously, in your face. The same guy behind this would also be asking them to make the logo bigger in other media. At first I though the branding would be quite sweet, with the Sony coloured logos being used in the wait bars, but I was sadly mistaken.

The first challenge is to watch a piece of video, with a ‘timelimit to download. Of course, the first time you try it, it;s too slow, so you get this:

Screenshot from site

Next you have to answer some questions, one of which is to do with the video you watched and then something like this:

Screenshot from site

There are good ways of integrating your product information into promotions like this, but this is not one of them. It just made me laugh!