By Emily Vines

    Targeting both English and Spanish speakers, creatives at Moroch, Dallas, and staffers at its internal Web development group WideEye, Dallas, have created on online game of keep away with sharks to promote McDonald’s Filet-of-Fish sandwich.

At this time of year, McDonald’s usually does a promotion for the fried fish sandwich that includes television, radio and outdoor advertising. For 2006, executive creative director Troy Scillian said they wanted to incorporate an online component that would allow the brand to engage and entertain the audience for a longer period of time. 

    The spot for the campaign–the :30 “Shark Bait” that Bob Rice directed through Plum Productions, Santa Monica, Calif.–features a woman walking through a large aquarium filled with sharks that are stalking her because of the Filet-of-Fish sandwich she is eating. Based on that concept, the creatives looked for a way to incorporate sharks into the Internet component.

    The result is an online game set underwater with three levels. The premise is that a player needs to keep the Filet-of-Fish sandwich away from circling sharks. To do that, he must use his mouse to move the sandwich around without touching the sharks or the sides of the tank. Level three increases the difficulty with rocks in the tank that the player must also avoid.

    Surviving in level one or two allows a gamer to advance to the next level of difficulty. However, there are other ways to enter the more difficult games. By clicking on “level codes,” one can get the codes to unlock the level two or level three games. The trade-off is e-mailing a link to the site to a friend or filling out a short survey.

Since the campaign is reaching out to two U.S. audiences–Spanish speaking audience members as well as those fluent in English–the site launches in English, but has the option to switch to Spanish. Scillian pointed out that most of the work they do for McDonald’s is in both languages, but they decided to extend that effort to this Web site, which is targeted to 18-28 year olds. The spot is also running in two languages. Since the spot is free of dialogue, the only alteration is with the voiceover at the end.

 

TRACKING PREDATORS

    The idea behind the underwater challenge was to create a simple game that can be played in a short period of time. A possible scenario Scillian offered was of two co-workers headed out to lunch. If one had to wait a couple of minutes for the other to make a phone call, instead of diving back into work, he could just play this game. Since the site is without music and sound effects, no one in the office would hear it. But, he added, the game can be addictive, especially since there is a competitive ranking of the 50 top scorers at each level.

The degree of difficulty increases over time as the sharks gradually speed up and increase in number. In levels two and three, a fountain drink and fries appear occasionally; rolling over them with the sandwich slows the predators down for a few seconds and gives players a brief break.

To develop the animated sharks in the game, interactive creative director Terry Wayne Ranson referenced his real-life encounter with the predator. Ranson swam with Blacktip Reef sharks off the coast of Grand Bahama Island a couple of years ago and used the resulting video as a reference. However, the sharks in the online game are supposed to be Great Whites in level one and three, and clearly look like Hammerhead sharks in level two. The modeling, animation and rendering were done in Maya and some of the finishing was in After Effects.

The sharks are programmed so that when they bounce off the walls of the tank, they change speed and direction randomly. “So it gives them a little bit of an AI, a little bit of intelligence about how they move rather than just being sort of like a pong ball,” Ranson related.

 

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