When the 3M Ergonomics Division came up with their ‘Precise Mousing Surface’ thingy (which offers a noticeable edge over traditional mouse pads, we’re told) they wanted a way to make people really experience the difference. Without going around and putting it in the consumers' hands, that is...

3M’s agency Modem Media thought why not show consumers how lousy their current mouse pad is? So, they devised an interactive banner advertisement - the 3M Precise Mousing Surface ‘Target Practice’ game – and intentionally made it difficult to illustrate a point: consumers could be a lot more accurate if they had a different mouse pad. The game was broken into three levels – easy (allegedly), hard, and virtually impossible. While consumers were playing, i.e. trying to click on pop-up targets within the ad, a mirror reflection of their mouse movements reinforced the message that 3M improves the ‘mousing experience’.

Results: Brian Blair, Head of Marketing (Europe) for Modem Media says 22% of those who saw the execution interacted with it and spent, on average, almost six minutes with the banner! Site visits and subsequent interactions spiked dramatically with sales as a result of the execution.

Cost: These high response rates more than make up for higher creative costs, which at the moment can run from five to ten times the cost of plain GIF banners. "As with any advertising medium," says Brian Blair, "the more extras you want to include - images, colours, movement, sound - the more it's going to cost to set up".