The Campaign in Brief
In the early 2010s, Magnum and its agency partners released a browser-based game with an idea that still sounds bold: instead of building a game about a website, they built a game across the websites of the open web. Players controlled an Aphrodite-styled character who ran, leapt, and zip-lined across real partner sites — YouTube, an automotive page, a fashion portal, a music site — collecting Magnum bonbons as the scenery changed under her feet.
It was one of the first big-budget HTML5 branded games and one of the most-shared interactive ads of its era.
How It Worked
The player loaded a Magnum site and pressed Start. The character appeared on a real, fully-rendered third-party site as the foreground layer. The page scrolled like a sidescroller; the character moved, jumped, and grabbed bonbons positioned across the layout. Reach the end of the page and the player transitioned to the next partner site — a Saab driving page, a luxury fashion gallery, a music streaming service — each handcrafted with bonbon placements and small platforming moments that respected the host site's own visual language.
There was no app, no plug-in, no install. HTML5 had just become viable in mainstream browsers, and the campaign used that newness as part of the story.
Why It Worked
Surprise as a media buy. Most branded games ask the player to come to the brand's website. Pleasure Hunt inverted that: it took the brand to the player's most-loved corners of the web. The "wait, I'm playing a game inside YouTube?" moment was the headline experience.
Native-feeling product placement. The bonbon was the collectible, the score, and the product all at once. There was no awkward swap between "game moment" and "ad moment" — they were the same moment.
Built for sharing. Completion time and bonbon count gave players a number to brag about. The cross-site spectacle gave them something to screenshot.
Results & Industry Recognition
Pleasure Hunt won at every major awards show that mattered in interactive that year — Cannes, the Clio Awards, the One Show — and is still cited in advertising-school case books as one of the first proof points that gamified content could outperform conventional display advertising on both engagement and earned media.
For the brand, the campaign positioned Magnum as a premium pleasure product willing to spend creative budget where its audience already spent their attention.
What Marketers Can Take Away
The literal mechanic — building a game inside other companies' websites — is hard to replicate today (browsers and partner relationships have changed). But the strategic moves are very portable:
Build Your Own Skill-Based Branded Game
Code Crush's Flappy Bird, Doodle Jump, and Dragon Strike formats give you a skill-based game where your product becomes the collectible. Run it on your site, embed it on partner sites, deploy it inside emailers — same idea as Pleasure Hunt, but no custom engine required.
@youtube[TBD|Magnum Pleasure Hunt — official campaign case study video]
Get a brandable, skill-based game live in under 30 days. Talk to Code Crush about a Pleasure Hunt-style web game built around your product.
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