• by Amy Corr , Staff Writer @MediaPostOTL, October 5, 2009

ESPN's yearly campaign promoting its coverage of "Monday Night Football" consistently features TV, online, print and outdoor elements.

For the fourth year of the network's "Is It Monday Yet?" campaign, Wieden+Kennedy New York added an additional component to the mix: interactive storescapes for passersby to play a virtual game of catch with NFLers.

Storescapes were placed in New York on 5th Ave. and 43rd Street; N. Michigan Ave. in Chicago and Water Street in Boston. I passed by the New York storescape but didn't play because someone was already using it and I had to be somewhere. It did look fun and engaging.

Touchscreens were equipped with gesture-recognition technology so passersby could stand in front of the store window and try catching virtual footballs thrown towards them. It's not as easy as it might sound. When the storescapes first launched Sept. 8, players were posting scores on the national leaderboard in the high 20s and low 30s range. Now that the campaign has been live for a few weeks, leaderboard scores have reached the 60s.

The game allows users to choose what quarterbacks they play with based on who's playing in the next "Monday Night Football" game. Visitors to a storescape today, for example, could choose between Brett Favre of the Vikings or Aaron Rodgers from the Packers.

Players are outfitted into their home or away jersey inside a 3-D stadium, and then the passing begins. There's actual audio commentary provided by ESPN anchors, who rate a user's performance until a pass is missed, which shatters the interactive window and ends the game.

Locations were selected based on heavy foot traffic and ample space to properly play the game.

Wieden+Kennedy New York brokered the media buy along with Monster Media and MacDonald Media. The cost for the storescapes was not released.