• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, June 13, 2013

I wrote recently about Coke’s very ambitious and exceptionally creative Ahhh.com digital-only campaign of mobile-friendly mini-games. This is among the best examples I have seen of mobilized content marketing that is truly native to both the device and its context. For the uninitiated, Coca-Cola started rolling out a range of creative mini-games nearly two months ago that grew incrementally, adding new challenges by the week. The campaign also solicits from users their own ideas for new games.

The company was good enough to share some of its early returns. In less than two months in market, the program has attracted 2.1 million unique visitors to the Ahhh.com sites. While made especially for mobile, the sites also have designs that take advantage of larger desktop and tablet screens.

The program is being supported by both on-package prompts and paid media. There are Ahhh.com messages behind the labels of 16-oz. and 20-oz. products. Promotion is also working through online video, banners, a search program, etc.

The targeted teen audience spends an average of two minutes engaging with the creative executions. The most popular mini-game is “Cat or Not,” where you have to guess from a super-zoomed image whether the picture is of a cat or something else before the images fully zoom out. A “Bottle Rocket” contest is the second-most-popular.

The campaign is also engaging user submission, 8,000 of them so far.

Coca-Cola just refreshed the interface for Ahhh.com. A new landing page now features an introductory polar bear video and a tiled interface that makes it much easier to find the mini-game you want.

Coca-Cola is taking the effort as a serious publishing project, which really is the only way that brands can make content marketing of any kind believable and sustaining. There are already scores of mini-games attached to the site, with seven more coming by the end of June and 17 more throughout the summer.

It will be interesting to see how this idea plays out long term. Coke has already shown more stamina than most brands in dedicating itself to a publishing project that could well become a platform. The Ahhh tag is broad enough to contain many ideas and stages if the idea has staying power with consumers.