Customer Placement; The latest marketing trend makes the consumer a player inside the commercial.

Byline: Sarah Sennott

During the summer of 2001, Mitsubishi's American dealerships were suddenly flooded with puzzling requests for the Lancer Evolution. Mitsubishi had never marketed this flashy compact sports car with a 271-horsepower engine in America. Where was all the interest coming from? The answer is exciting advertisers the world over: videogames. Sony PlayStation 2 had featured the Lancer Evolution in a new version of Gran Turismo, a top-selling racing-car game released that July. The result was a cultlike following for the car. "We were spammed by gamers," recalls Ian Beavis, senior vice president of marketing at Mitsubishi North America. Two years later the Lancer Evolution was released in America, and has been a big success. "It's a true testament to the power of that medium."

Threatened by declining TV ratings in some countries, advertisers have been looking for new ways to capture the wandering eye of the consumer, from producing short ads-cum-movies to increasingly aggressive product placement on popular shows. But the newest trend goes beyond trying to divert eyes to a strategically placed cereal box for a few brief seconds: instead companies are looking to place the customer inside an advertising game, or "advergame," almost indefinitely. "You are now in the world the advertiser has created for you," says advergame designer Dan Fergeson.

Several corporate giants have recently launched advergames. One from Nokia uses a snow-sledding game to promote text messaging. After each race your results are messaged to a phone that pops up on screen. Special, speedier sleds can be unlocked only by texting yourself a secret password. A new game from Lipton features an office worker winding through cubicles gobbling up Cup-a-Soups to "Beat the 3PM Slump." Kraft Foods draws more than 3 million visitors a month to its Web site of 80 different downloadable games--like mini-golf, bowling and puzzles--incorporating its brands. "Every ad today is a victim of multitasking," says Michael Wood, director of Cocojambo, a London-based branding-entertainment agency. "Gaming draws the most engaged, concentrated audience."

The advantages for advertisers are clear: games are now available on virtually any digital platform, ...