And my favorite city is...

In a way, Monopoly -the famous board game- calls for associations of winterly family moments around the table, animated late-night discussions amongst friends and a representable list of the most famous locations in your country. As such, at it's core, Monopoly is a very local game.

Now, leveraging on the immense power of the global internet, Hasbro has launched what promises to be another eye-catching online campaign.
You can now go and vote for your favorite city to appear on the next edition of "Monopoly: World Edition". At this time, there are 33 days left to vote for what will be a list of 20 winning cities. You can choose from 68 pre-selected cities, but as we live in a "free, 2.0" world, you can also nominate any city that you want. Talking about a global competition, it seems a sure bet that this worldwide fight for recognition should top the rivalry that seen between states each year at the Eurovision Song Competition!

With that in mind, just imagine what engagement this campaign may bring in say 2 years when this campaigns extends to IDTV voting. That is a big may, because for the moment you can only pull this off on internet. But even so, this is a school example of a new trend where online campaigns can beleveraged offline, from print and PR to television and POS & packaging.

Hasbro clearly choose to capture the imagination of their audience. They made the right decision to focus on the core strengths of their brand, and apply the power of online marketing onto it. The result is a spirited campaign that will help sales of Monopoly as the game becomes available in stores, but that all the same strengthen the Monopoly brand on the long term.