Promotional Consideration: Play to lose

by Eric Caoili { Jul 6th 2008 at 9:00PM }

As it did with My Word Coach, Ubisoft sees a lot of potential in My Weight Loss Coach (My Health Coach in Europe), putting enough money behind the nutrition and fitness trainer's marketing budget to support several print and television advertising campaigns worldwide. The publisher has timed the title's release and its promotional push perfectly, too, riding the exercise-game wave set in motion by Wii Fit.

In this edition of Promotional Consideration, we look at several of those My Weight Loss Coach advertisements to pick out the goofy details and voice our trivial complaints. Eat a light lunch, run up a flight of steps, and meet us after the break for the ads!

Gallery: My Weight Loss Coach

Dress socks. Lobster boxer shorts. Huge pedometer.

This playful piece comes from, surprisingly, this month's issue of style and shopping magazine Lucky. We love finding ads for DS games in nontraditional places!

Oddly, Ubisoft appears to be suggesting that playing My Weight Loss Coach regularly will not only slim your waist, but will also depants you and absorb your attention to the point where you won't notice the passing girls laughing at you.

After examining this image closely, we're not sure we like where it's leading. The young woman seems a bit too cheerful about this vulnerable, distracted man she's stumbled upon -- her plotting eyes are locked on his lobster-decorated buttocks, and the stylus in her hand is at near-striking distance. Let's hope he hears the scamp creeping up behind him in time to pull up his jeans and run the hell out of there.

My Health Coach commercial (France):

My Health Coach commercial starring Italian football manager Carlo Mazzone (Italy):

As for these two European commercials, despite their different approaches, they do a satisfactory job selling the game. We really would liked to have seen more of what attracted us to My Weight Loss Coach in the first place, though -- its Don Hertzfeldt-esque art direction.

With assets like these on hand, why not use them more often? The charming stick figures are way more interesting than the massive, e-reader-sized pedometer Ubisoft has used as the centerpiece of its advertisements and My Weight Loss Coach boxart, don't you agree?

[Thanks, Alexis!]

Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.