It seems Hasbro had a brilliant idea – launch a free online version of Monopoly™. So they got Tribal DDB to build it for them and engaged on a media blitz promoting MONOPOLY City Streets everywhere they could. Then they went live… I suspect they fairly quickly wished they had done things in a slightly different order because they quickly discovered they had generated rather more demand than they could handle.
The comments on their blog posts rather beautifully demonstrate just how quickly you can trash a carefully built brand by failing to anticipate and prepare for the load generated by your own marketing antics. It really is a brilliant exhibition of just how EPIC a FAIL can be.
This was all of interest to me because they are apparently making use of OpenStreetMap data in some way – exactly how is not entirely clear because nobody can get in to find out!
I totally agree with you.
The name of the game should be how to kill monopoly.
The guy who built this is now billing it as one of his big successes – unbelievable- http://bit.ly/52mGPc