There's nothing like pairing nostalgia for the good 'ol days of college beer pong with holiday cheer. Which is exactly what ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi LA and digital shop Deeplocal have set out to do by hosting four days of virtual eggnog pong, a.k.a. Nog Pong, to prove their ability to put together a dynamic social media campaign.
Interested parties can head over to NogPong.com and enter a queue to play a game of Nog Pong with an assemblage of Saatchi & Saatchi employees between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. PT, who will appear on webcam decked in festive holiday gear. The employees will use their arms to throw Ping Pong balls across a table at a formation of cups filled with eggnog, while visitors on the other end (a.k.a. you) will make similar shots using a robot (the "Nogbot") to take aim and fire.
To create the Nogbot, a team of Deeplocal employees reverse engineered a ping-pong practice machine and replaced its interior with their own wiring and microcontroller to control its movements. They then devised a web-based API to communicate with the robot, allowing users to aim and shoot balls at different speeds and directions from their computers.
I tried to get into the game yesterday and found myself number 722 in the queue -- no game. Those who are similarly impatient can still participate, however, by chatting (or, you know, trash-talking) players from Saatchi by tweeting to @NogPong.