Brands Friending Social Gaming Amid New Web Craze

Honda Motors Co. (HMC) and McDonald’s Corp. (MCD) are making a push into social gaming to promote their brands, as Madison Avenue begins to take notice of the latest Web craze that is drawing growing numbers of people to games on social networks.

Honda is kicking off a campaign Aug. 23 for its new sporty hybrid CR-Z on “Car Town,” a recently launched social game on Facebook aimed at car enthusiasts. The game is from Cie Games, a company that is backed in part by Rick Thompson, the co-founder of Playdom Inc.

McDonald’s, meanwhile, has signed an ad deal with “Farmville,” the hit farming game on Facebook from Zynga Game Network Inc., according to people familiar with the matter. A spokeswoman for the fast-food company says it is in discussions with Zynga but declined to provide details.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Must-Reads from other Websites

Panos Mourdoukoutas

Why Apple Should Buy China’s Xiaomi

Paul Graham

What I Didn’t Say

Benjamin Bratton

We Need to Talk About TED

Mat Honan

I, Glasshole: My Year With Google Glass

Chris Ware

All Together Now

Corey S. Powell and Laurie Gwen Shapiro

The Sculpture on the Moon

About Voices

Along with original content and posts from across the Dow Jones network, this section of AllThingsD includes Must-Reads From Other Websites — pieces we’ve read, discussions we’ve followed, stuff we like. Six posts from external sites are included here each weekday, but we only run the headlines. We link to the original sites for the rest. These posts are explicitly labeled, so it’s clear that the content comes from other websites, and for clarity’s sake, all outside posts run against a pink background.

We also solicit original full-length posts and accept some unsolicited submissions.

Read more »