Actors To Play Wii Sports in ‘Live’ Cinema Ads

Imagine sitting back in your local multiplex, chomping on expensive popcorn while waiting for your movie to start, when you see four people kitted out in full tennis regalia jump up and start to play Wii Sports tennis on the big screen, as part of an advert for Nintendo’s motion-controlled Wii wonder toy.

Well, this is something that is actually going to be happening as of this bank holiday weekend, with the first-ever live cinema ads as live theatre - in this case, a mother and son tennis match. The campaign is set to run in cinemas to coincide with the opening weekend of Pirates of the Caribbean 3.

What better way to demonstrate to a large (and captive) bunch of people the joys of Wii Sports?

Ad agency news service, Creative Match reports that: “The ad reel plays in the darkened auditorium as usual, but the two actors are present amongst the audience. Steve, an achingly cool teenager sits near the front. Unbeknown to him, his mother, Elsa, enters the auditorium in search of her son. At the appropriate moment during the on-screen commercials, the ad reel is stopped and the house lights come on. Steve’s mum bustles in and calls her son embarrassingly from the darkness. What follows is a living hell for Steve as his mother challenges him to a rematch of Nintendo Wii tennis there and then in front of an audience of total strangers. Preferring to lose some of his cool rather then look cowardly Steve takes up the challenge. He soon forgets his embarrassment as he becomes caught up in the game.”

Though until we actually see it happen for ourselves, SPOnG is on the fence – we are not sure if this is genuinely creative marketing, or the crazy ideas of a Nathan Barley-esque Shoreditch media agency run amok.

The campaign is comprised of five teams of two Performers operating nationally across nine different Picturehouse cinemas (Clapham, Greenwich, Stratford East, Cambridge and Liverpool this weekend and Edinburgh, York, Southampton and Brixton the following weekend).

It's all a bit old-skool really though, isn't it? Real people? Bah!

^{source: Creativematch.com}