Who said advertisers couldn’t take advantage of the TiVo culture?
On last night’s episode of Lost, an advertiser and a major network finally got together and did something very creative. If you are a die hard Lost fan and were watching last night’s episode you may have caught a commercial that was aired towards the end of the show. The commercial was aired during the normal commercial time slot and not during the show and it was about The Hanso Foundation. The Hanso Foundation is known to Lost fans as the creators of the Dharma Initiative and the mystery that surrounds the island. The advertisement gave a toll free telephone number to call and a link to the website http://www.subLYMONal.com, note the capital letters “LYMON” in the URL. The website is a flash puzzle with the word “OBEY” written in the middle of windows that rotate around in a hexagon shape. If you click on the windows the same amount of times as the “numbers” the website reveals a code “heir apparent” and directs you to The Hanso Foundation http://thehansofoundation.org/ website. The website contains very interesting information about the background of the foundation and the executives that have been mentioned in the show.
Now, remember the capital letters written in the URL above. If you go to http://www.LYMON.com you will see it is a website for Sprite. Also, remember the word “OBEY” that was used, ring any bells? You got it, the Sprite slogan “Obey your thirst”. Not only was this really creative but it was completely integrated into the experience that Lost has created for it’s viewers. Most people, if they actually watched the commercials, wouldn’t have noticed it or even better wouldn’t have had time to write down the phone number or the URL. This was the epitome of a Tivo moment. Just like when everyone had to pause their Tivo to look at the map on the Hatch Blast Door, viewers needed to pause their Tivo and get this information. This advertisement has created a ton of buzz on the Internet. This is the main topic of Lost message boards and peoples Blogs. The most interesting thing about this is even if you noticed this and went to the websites you may not even have realized that the capital letters were part of a promotion with The http://www.cocacola.com. Nevertheless, Lost fans are known for analyzing, and let’s face it, over-analyzing the show and it was only a matter of time before everyone figured out what this was all about. Kudos to The Coca-Cola Company and Lost, I am quite impressed and this is a lesson to the advertisers that are complaining about the viewers skipping commercials, Time to Get Smarter!