Vick?s Cough, Cold and Flu kicked off its first mobile advertising campaign in mid-December built around banner ads that expand to show a football-themed game when clicked on.

The ad units for Vick?s DayQuil and NyQuil products appear in Yahoo! Fantasy Football apps and let users play a Vick?s-themed football game without taking them out of the fantasy football app experience. The campaign from Vick?s, which is owned by Procter & Gamble, will run through the end of the football season.

?The goal is to play the game, experience it, defeat the cold symptoms and keep NyQuil and DayQuil top of mind during the football season which is also the height of the cold and flu season,? said Pat Morgan, Cincinnati, OH-based creative director of interactive marketing agency Possible Worldwide.

?This is very topical and relevant to people who are already in the football mindset,? he said. ?The game doesn?t take them out of the app experience but offers up some content that builds on their desire to interact with the NFL while educating them on what Vick?s does to alleviate a cold during the winter months.?

Ready to play
The campaign is built around the idea that in the NFL there are no sick days and Vick?s provides the product efficacy to enable users to always be ready to play a game, just like brand spokesperson and New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees.

When a user clicks on a banner ad, a game appears with the option to play either a night or a day football game. The user is the quarterback and must throw DayQuil or Nyquil at various NFL football players who are the embodiments of various cold symptoms such as a stuffy nose, cough and fever.

Possible worked with Medialets to create the ad unit by taking some existing game functionality and reapply it in a way that was different.

The campaign, which leverages an existing partnership with the NFL, is Vick?s first move into mobile and is acting as a test to determine what kind of awareness and engagement the brand can create via mobile.

Possible will be measuring the campaign for recall and purchase intent.

?Our challenge was within the confines of the mobile ad unit to create awareness of what the product does and fill people in on the campaign idea while leveraging Vick?s relationship with Drew Brees,? Mr. Morgan said.

?We sought to leverage that relationship in a way that would give people access to the brand and a way to engage with the brand in a way that they hadn?t done in the past,? he said.

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York