Born from a partnership between Sydney agency OIL and brewer Lion Nathan Australia, www.tooheysnew.com.au was originally conceived as a promotional piece for Tooheys New’s sponsorship of the Melbourne Cup – Australia’s most famous horse race. The website was a key component in the Tooheys New Melbourne Cup Millionaire promotion (an integrated campaign for someone to win $1,000,000 cash) providing an online entry mechanic and generating prospects for future activity. The online environment was completely in-tune with the brand. With ambient pub noise on the homepage, the user is constantly immersed in a “Tooheys New” environment, leaving a strong brand impression. As part of the promotional website, OIL developed an online Horse Racing and Betting game to create excitement in the lead up to the actual Melbourne Cup race, a game that would be played almost 4 million times in a 12-week period! Incorporating some highly intelligent parsing of XML into Flash, the game is one of the most popular games on the web. With the total number of games played, and some users playing for up to 3 or 4 hours at a time, OIL delivered a level of immersion to the Tooheys brand unheard of in traditional advertising.