How adland is cutting Big Media out of the future: a great piece from Wired on the Tribal DDB / Monopoly City Streets Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG), and the changes for the future of brands and products.

It’s a whopper of a case study that speaks to the heart of all digital initiatives. ¬†Ultimately, the digital industry does (should) do one or more of three things:

• Help / Augment
• Engage
• Entertain / Educate

Whatever the digital initiative, if it does only one of these things, it’s not enough. ¬†If it does two of these things, it’s got a good chance at succeeding. ¬†If it does three of these things, it’s likely to work very well.

How this Monopoly game ticks all three boxes?

• It helps / augments the experience of playing Monopoly by making it a global game with potentially millions of competitors.
• It engages through it being a great game, a great product and scalable across millions of peoples.
• It entertains. ¬†It is Monopoly after all.

Disclosure: I’m the Digital Strategist at Tribal DDB Melbourne.