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A great bit of Disney's imaginative copywriting
YaYa spends time online on a Disney roleplaying game where you live the life of a cartoon animal. Last week her online pet, 'neglected' for a few hours, ran away from her character's home.
This is the email sent to the site's support staff:
My puffleball ran away. how do i find her?
The response came yesterday, and I reproduce it here because of its imaginative approach to her problem.
Hello,
Oh dear! I can help you find her. Puffles are really great pets, but
sometimes they get bored if you don't visit your igloo very often to feed them
and play with them. When a puffle gets bored it is likely that it will run
away.
The good news is when your puffle runs away it almost always runs back to the
pet shop to be with other puffle friends. If you go visit the pet shop I am
confident that you will find your puffle there. You will need to purchase her
again and teach her her name again, because puffles can be very forgetful
sometimes. Once you re-name your puffle it will appear in your igloo. Make
sure to take very good care of it this time!
If you have any more questions please feel free to write in anytime. Have a
fun day!
Sincerely,
Leah F
Club Support
Wow. By implying that it simply went back to the pet shop the letter calms any fears and guilt the kid might have over the pet.. It encourages you to buy a new one, the only true way you're going to walk away with a pet, but convinces the child that it's the same familiar - if amnesiac - face. It even works in a mild scolding and a lesson on how to take care of their pet.
So YaYa got a new online pet, convinced it was the same one that left her, and all is well.
My hats off to that copywriter. Great job!
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Kudos to Disney - they rock!
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<excuse me while I gag on the saccharinity of that situation>
Sure the player isn't put off playing the game by guilt/grief and has to expiate the sin of neglect by sacrificing (buying a *new* pet) but maybe the player needs to know that neglect kills as surely as active cruelty.
The scenario reminds me of the awful sit-coms where the hamster gets boarded at the neighbors, who feel they have to replace the thing when they think it has died, when it was actually hidden under the sofa, producing umpty-nine pups. Or abnoxious, wealthy grandma leaves her parrot at Sonny's house where it dies of something that G'ma expected, but Sonny does the rounds of pet stores at 2am full of angst at having killed the bird.
;^) Jan the Gryphon
http://journals.aol.com/gryphondear/Gryphondears-Word-of-th e-Day/ -
"Of course, my kid is purposely neglecting her webkinz just to see if they actually die if you don't take care of them. "
ROTFLMAO
And regarding the other comment - once the pet runs away, that's the ballgame. They don't come back. :) -
WOW. that's really cool that they do that. truly creative...and they teach the kid some responsibility while still keeping that innocence :) I like it.
Of course, my kid is purposely neglecting her webkinz just to see if they actually die if you don't take care of them.
have a great weekend~
~Bernadette
4/26/08 3:49 PM
Julie