In late 2007, when we all started committing to Facebook in our droves, I started playing quite a lot of Scrabulous. Like I mean quite a lot. I was studying fairly heavily at the time and found that if I kept somewhere between 8 and 10 games going at any one time it meant that whenever I would choose to refresh the homepage (oh let’s say once every 5 minutes) almost invariably someone would have played a turn. Three minutes of time wasting, here I come. Easy procrastination in a word-building bucket. And because it was word-based you could always justify it to yourself on the grounds that it was building your vocabulary. Obviously an essential component of any essay. Although given that in the past 15 minutes I just played the word ‘ZAX‘ in one particular game, I’m not really sure how feasible an explanation that is…
But I’ve found that the true problem with it all is that even a passing acquaintance with online Scrabble essentially renders you unable to play the game in real life. Why? Two letter words. JA, JO, XI, XU, ZA, ZO and QI might be your best friends on Facebook, but you drop any of those bad boys in a game of face to face Scrabble (just try and resist that juicy Triple Letter Square) and you may well find yourself being force-fed some of the less crucial tiles left in the bag. And noone wants to spend the evening digesting 2 Vs, 3 Us and a C. Trust me.
All of which only has the most passing relation to the point of interest at hand: Scrabble ads! As anyone who knows me in the slightest can attest to, I tend to treat advertising with the sort of disdain I reserve for colonic herpes and especially determined corpse camping Horde-affiliated Rogues. Scum. Of. The. Earth. But every now and then a particularly inspired campaign comes through that dismantles my preconceptions and actually delivers something I… well, enjoy. Like seeing that especially determined corpse camping Horde-affiliated Rogue have the shit beaten out of him by a passing dragonkin. Yeah, that’s right bitch. Suffer in your jocks.
Not that I’m writing this because I’m dying repeatedly in WoW or anything… *cough*
Scrabble! Better than WoW. Maybe. But do watch these ads. They are quite wonderful, have great music and are as beautifully designed as any campaign I’ve seen in a number of years. And you wouldn’t even know they were about Scrabble. How all the best ads are I guess. Think my favourite is the second. Yours?
[via Motionographer]
/Luke
10 responses so far ↓
1 Aqualec // May 6, 2009 at 7:52 am
These Ads are sweet! I like the Music in the second one the best.
@luke I got a mate that pulls out the two letters words like QI etc, as well as spelling actual letters like the letter F (spelt ef or eff).
He has the Official Scrabble Dictionary which includes these words so you can’t technically stop him from using them. But it also doesn’t mean i have to go easy on him in video games.
http://tinyurl.com/dlku7k
2 Dave // May 6, 2009 at 10:27 am
These certainly are a great series of ads, they’ve been doing the rounds of the marketing blogs for a while. But clearly the third one is the best!
3 Adam // May 6, 2009 at 3:46 pm
@Aqualec
“as well as spelling actual letters like the letter F (spelt ef or eff)”
Well, I’m sort of on your side there, regardless of the “Scrabble Dictionary” says. “F” shouldn’t have a spelling, but it does have a pronounciation
4 Brett // May 6, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Groovy. I like the third one too.
Were these songs written for the ads?
Reminds me of the chris cunningham vid for squarepusher come on my selector. which came first the the song or the filmclip
5 Jimi // May 6, 2009 at 8:22 pm
dude that is ace.
Yeah I’m with you on number two. but I quite like the dude at the beginning of the third one nervously edging forward.
6 paul // May 7, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Dude. If you’re getting camped, call up the big dog.
(I’m the big dog)
7 Willian! // May 16, 2009 at 11:31 pm
I like the third one best, and after watching those adds, I really wanted to play scrabulous, but I went onto facebook to find that it’s gone! :’( It’s GONE!
8 Willian! // May 16, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Wait I meant I like the first one best, I get first and third confused alll the time.
9 luke // May 17, 2009 at 11:24 am
@Willian!: happy news! there’s actually a proper version of Hasbro-endorsed scrabble available on facebook (that is if you’re not in the US or Canada).
10 Steph // May 18, 2009 at 12:42 am
I like the 3rd one! Tomorrow I will have to investigate scabble on facebook, sound fun? but now its time for sleep
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