Four hours after the release and my zombie is still alive. I got an email this morning to say it’s wandering around the NME site and it is, constrained in a header banner ad, blundering into walls and everything. When you get to the site, you log in and it shows you which one is yours.

I’ve been talking about this campaign all week, it’s been fun feeding the zombie and making it run round for exercise. One thing that really surprised me though was a lack of URL on the posters I’ve seen, as though the different parts of the campaign did not talk to each other. But it’s too late to rectify that situation now, I’m just going to watch the zombie and hope it survives the day.

I read about this promotion and just thought it was absolutely brilliant. So many digital stuff can be reworking - often in a great way - but finding some new way of using games and banner ads can be hard. This one is excellent.

The Resident Evil Extinction DVD comes out in the UK on Monday 18th Feb and there’ll be a big interactive advertising buy on that day promoting the film. But the ads are going to be special, they are going to be interactive and full of your zombies, all fighting it out to be the last survivor and win the prize of TV, PS3 and a copy of the film. Here’s the plan.

• Go to the Resident Evil Extinction DVD site and create your own zombie; load up your photo and set the decay buttons zombify your face.
• Visit the page regularly and train and feed your zombie. This is like the little electronic pets that you have to keep alive.
• On the 18th, the banner display ads get released and your zombie will be one of them, loose in the world. You’ll get an email telling you where it is so you can go and look at how it’s doing. Your zombie will roam across the ads on the site.
• But Alice is also out there, killing off the zombies at randon. However, if you’ve fed and trained it, it stands a better chance of survival and being the last one standing. Alice will be tracked, as will the status of all the zombies. Whoever is left will win the prize.

So you get continued brand awareness from repeat visits to the initial site and from looking at the ads, buzz from the competition on the build up and eyeballs going to the sites where the ads are (which implies there is a value-add deal being done and it’s not a straightforward paid deal). The only thing I’d have liked to have seen is the ability to shore up your zombie on the day of the big hunt, maybe allow it to search for food across the site or something. It appears to have come from Green Room Digital (not sure if they just did the build or did the concept as well) and all I can say is congratulations for a really cool promotion.