Orcs Go Better With Coke

We've all heard it claimed that the video games industry is bigger than the movie industry--and we've all heard it proved that the claim is an artful crock, built on a comparison of apples (total gaming-related revenues) and oranges (domestic U.S. box office figures). Yes, numbers are a tempting but treacherous means of establishing the cultural significance of video games.  So even  as  World of Warcraft approaches $1 billion in annual revenues--potentially "one of the most lucrative entertainment media properties of any kind," according to a front-page article in today's New York Times--one hesitates to claim this figure means the MMO moment has arrived. What then to rely on as an indicator of genuine cultural resonance? Well, front-page coverage in the New York Times is a start. But I would like to submit another, and perhaps ultimately more reliable, marker. Let's call it the Shanghai Taxi Weirdness Index.

I'm posting from China, where two days ago I got into a taxi and saw, on the little TV set you get to watch in Chinese taxis sometimes, the most hallucinatory Coca-Cola commercial I have ever witnessed: We open with a vision of the hip Taiwanese girl band SHE lounging about in their slick apartment somewhere. Zoom in on a laptop sitting on the kitchen table, out of which, suddenly, emerge a big green World of Warcraft orc and his troll and Tauren sidekicks, who proceed to rampage through the apartment, raiding the fridge for Coke, then grabbing the bandmembers themselves and dragging them kicking and squealing back into the computer and the barren lands of the Horde. Cut to intertitle: Who will save the girls? Will it be... international hottie soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo? (Cut to CGI shot of Ronaldo kicking a gnarly looking spiked ball straight at a big green orc goalie.) Cute little punkette singing star and "Chinese Idol" winner Li Yuchun? (Seen riding to the rescue in stylish Alliance armor.) Or will it be, perhaps, the girls of SHE themselves? You decide! Go to this website and yadda yadda...

The commercial played twice during my ride and left me incapable of any comment except, perhaps, for this:

Sweet and caffeinated number-one brand in the world? Check.
Record-industry celebrities? Check.
Television idol? Check.
Sports world hero? Check.
Geeky role-playing game characters? Check.
Movie star of the moment? Uh-oh...

Update:

Courtesy of YouTube...

Opening sequence.
Cristiano Ronaldo.
Li Yuchun ending.
S.H.E. ending.

Comments

[Idyll]

1.

Maybe a little bit late as news goes but that aside, they ARE hilarious. They can be found here if you poke around a bit: http://www.coca-cola.com.cn/
on YouTube too.

The REAL question is why is the chinese coca-cola website so much cooler than it's English counterpart?

[Ordinal Malaprop]

2.

I could only find a more basic one involving the girl band fighting off a sleazy record exec in WoW. Which was still pretty good. I'm *dying* to see the one mentioned above. It sounds like stories made up by children (and some fanfic writers) where they pile on dinosaurs, ninjas, pop stars, wizards, robots, everything cool they can think of all at once... all it needs now is to have the watcher in there as well, because these stories usually include whoever made them up, and their friends. And look, it does that by making it interactive.

Consistent settings, stuff like that - those are for *grown-ups*. I bet this was storyboarded in crayon.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

3.

Incidentally, I don't mean the above as a criticism.

[Suitcase Jefferson]

4.

No my friend, the sad truth is that it is a product of hours of meetings, discussions, strategizing on how to appeal to that magical demographic, and combining all decent suggestions into a mad package in the typical Chinese way that theoretically offends no-one, satisfies everyone, and is therefore clearly eight million times more effective than 'choosing one thing and faking it right.'

[Hirebrand]

5.

Aforementioned "Horde grabbing the Coke" ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT-_3-M5TpM

[Victor Pineiro]

6.

Though I'd never discount the Shanghai Taxi Weirdness Index, the NY Times front page isn't where the media coverage ended today! CNN.com just published an article on the Constance Steinkuehler's report dealing with sociability in MMOs, and this is just a few days after the Boston Globe's article on MMO addiction! Why is the media suddenly getting saturated with this stuff?

Links:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/09/06/online.games.sociability.reut/index.html?section=cnn_latest

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/05/technology/05wow.html?hp&ex=1157515200&en=9d3b5750e6f5e8bc&ei=5094&partner=homepage

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/09/02/computer_addictions_are_a_serious_glitch_in_online_play/

[Julian Dibbell]

7.

YouTube links added! Thanks for the tips.

[covert.c.]

8.

"No my friend, the sad truth is that it is a product of...on how to appeal to that magical demographic, and combining all decent suggestions into a mad package in the ...way that theoretically offends no-one, satisfies everyone..."

Hmmm kinda like...WoW?

[Juan Incognito]

9.

So one could assume that WOW is effectively mainstream in some urban areas in China? I still do not think that that big Western brands like this would associate with WOW in the US/Australia or NZ. While gaming, and for that matter MMOs are becoming far more acceptable they still seem to retain a certain shameful, geeky image.