Golden Jigsaw: The Next Million Dollar Homepage?

Yesterday, we had a competition submitted to us for a site described as “the most powerful viral marketing event of 2007″! Called The Golden Jigsaw, it involves players locating pieces of a jigsaw that have been placed on various (paying for the privilege) websites. The players have to visit the websites, using various clues, and then collect their jigsaw pieces. The first person to collect all 1000 wins a prize of $1000000.

The site has now evolved since then to provide a lot more detail and allow websites to purchase jigsaw pieces so they can be involved - a sort of million dollar homepage idea but with jigsaw pieces rather than pixels - however, the further down the 1000 pieces of jigsaw you go, the more expensive they become!

The Golden Jigsaw! The most powerful viral marketing event of 2007? Or just another pixel buying site, but with jigsaw pieces?

On the face of it, The Golden Jigsaw looks a pretty good idea. The chance to win a million dollars should attract interest, not only from players, but from the media - and as players have to visit the sponsored sites to locate jigsaw pieces, there’s potential traffic generation. It’s samey in some respects to the million dollar homepage phenomena, but perhaps sufficiently different to make people take a look. Solving the puzzle should generate forum discussions, perhaps even Facebook group creations? It really depends how it’s taken on board.

Of course all is not that golden with this jigsaw game! I’m not that keen on the “first past the post” wins the prize idea. Much better to allow all who complete the puzzle in a certain amount of time to have a chance to win the prize. Also, the last few pieces of the jigsaw that are for sale are close to £6000 each, so may not be tempting to advertisers, and that may mean it’s not concluded.

The site is hoping to attract interest from various social sites including YouTube and MySpace and have released a somewhat obscure and bizarre advert to promote the site.

The Golden Jigsaw launches on July 20th, it will be interesting to see if this puzzle gets completed or whether it ends up being sent to a jumble sale, wrapped up in a plastic bag because there’s more than a few pieces missing.