Remember Farmville? Of course you do. It was that game you thought was quite fun a year or so ago. You played it and played it and played it until your farm was the size of a small planet and your friends stopped talking to you because you were clogging up your Facebook feed with "I've just harvested some peonies! Look at my carrots! Will you buy me a new cow?".
Anyway. While we may have stopped playing, the game is still popular with quite a few people worldwide - a massive 80 million by February last year. Which makes it (ahem) fertile territory if you've got something to sell.
So who's been tapping the market? Give up? Well, Lady Gaga obviously. Dur.
To promote the launch of her new album, Born This Way, Farmville turned into Gagaville for two weeks. Players got to listen to exclusive album tracks while buying Gaga-themed pigs and sheep (the Gaga baa-baas), building Gaga barns and planting Gaga-themed crops. Like blond hairpieces and bondage tape, probably.
Now I can't decide if this is bonkers, brilliant or brilliantly bonkers. You wouldn't think that arch-mentalist, gender-transcending, glam-kitsch Gaga is the right match for the folksy charm of Farmville. But it's this tension that helped produce the following bizarrely amusing promotional video.
Did it work? Well, as with most online marketing, there's no real way of knowing. But the fact is that Born This Way has achieved the fastest first week sales for 2011. And it seems people are still going crazy for Farmville.
No, not crazy. Oh, what is the word I'm looking for? Nope, it's gone.
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