This interactive promotional campaign did not benefit from any media buy, only an email sent to Air Canada e-newsletter subscribers. The intrinsic viral nature of the concept also served to double the number of players. The concept? A silly game starring Canada geese who weren’t cast in an Air Canada television ad (in fact, they are puppets). The objective? To form a flock of geese and embark on a great migration across North America with the final goal of reaching Goose Bay in 15 days!

Every three days, each player receives an email asking them to respond to a question on the site in order to accumulate points. Links to clues all over the Web makes answering the questions easier, and more fun! This also leads players to catch a glimpse of the geese on YouTube, Flickr, MySpace and other social networking sites. In addition, there is a satire of LonelyGirl15 (LonelyGoose38D), an intriguing URL (ilovegeese.com) hidden in vacation photos and an ornithologist’s observations of rare flock formations on his blog.

Like any good flock, participation from everyone is indispensable to the success of the journey. If one player answers a question late, the entire group is penalized, indicated by a descending point system, to make it more fun. Fortunately, the players can identify the slow geese (the geese flapping their wings in the marsh, to the right of the dashboard) and send them an individual “threat,” consisting of funny videos urging them to hurry up. The players can also send emails to each other via the dashboard.

Note: The puppets will be for sale on eBay at the end of the campaign in July.

Preliminary results (April 8 – 28)
Visits: 337,282 (138,260 after sending the email)
Pages/visits: 18.49
Bounce rate: 10.97%
Pageviews: 6,236,578
Avg. time on site: 00:13:01