15 letters launches innovative online gaming promotion!

OrbitzGames.com Awards Gamers With Free Travel While Interacting With One of the Online World's Most Successful Branding Initiatives

Chicago - September 12, 2005 - 15 letters, Inc. today announced the launch of OrbitzGames.com, an online gaming tournament sparked by the overwhelming popularity of the company's innovative and thoughtfully creative Orbitz pop-under games, which have effectively raised the bar for advertising in the online world.

15 letters, a Chicago-based communication design company delivering strategic design, marketing and image-based solutions, launched OrbitzGames.com to extend their creative vision of how deeply online marketing could positively impact the Orbitz brand.

OrbitzGames.com will serve up a new game every 20 days, starting with "Island Hop," in which users must catapult a cheerful beachgoer the farthest distance possible across a series of tropical islands with the help of a trusty see-saw, some waddling pelicans, a whale and, of course, a few wriggling octopi. Subsequent games will include "Where's My Hotel?" which challenges travelers to navigate a maze of buildings in various cities to find their hotel, and "Gondoliero," which gives visitors an interactive taste of life as a Venetian gondolier.

Every day, the newly-created website will award registered members who play the featured game with a chance to win a free vacation for two to Las Vegas. At the end of the promotion, a grand prize winner will be randomly selected to win a year's worth of free travel for two anywhere in the continental United States.

As its online agency of record, 15 letters has launched the Orbitz brand to new heights by employing its fresh, dynamic approach to online marketing, evident in the wave of catchy pop-under games with an unusually high average click-through rate of 11 percent, more than four times the industry average. Many of the pop-unders incorporate fun, sports-related themes designed to captivate users, such as the mini-golf diversion titled "Sink the Putt," or the engaging "Go Ski Racer," where visitors race through the slaloms against the computer to be the first to the finish line. While all of the games 15 letters creates showcase the Orbitz brand, some push travel to the forefront, such as "Run For Your Flight," in which a hurried traveler hustles through city streets, into a cab, through a crowded airport and eventually to the departure gate - stopping only to jump for a gulp of reenergizing latte.

15 letters strategically incorporated several features into OrbitzGames.com that contribute to the site's sense of community. The "Who's Here?" feature gives gamers a real-time interface to learn how many members are active playing each game. In addition, the Who's Here?' tool identifies players via their personalized profiles. Registered members are encouraged to create their own Orbitz-stylized "game face" by choosing from a series of head shapes, hairstyles, mouth expressions, eyes, and backgrounds. These features help to foster the development and growth of an online community within the OrbitzGames.com site.

"These pop-unders have taken on a life of their own and drawn together gamers from around the world, so OrbitzGames.com is really a natural progression, offering a one-stop outlet for fans of the games," said Mark Rattin, president and creative director of 15 letters. "This campaign is not only an effective promotion but a testament to an online marketing campaign's potential to move beyond the norm and foster an online community of visitors who actively seek out the interactivity of the pop-unders."

The key challenge 15 letters faced with the OrbitzGames.com campaign was constructing a format for the pop-unders that allows users to navigate between the game and other running applications freely. While most "advergames" are integrated directly into the host website, forcing visitors to play continuously, OrbitzGames.com archives each game with a unique URL, allowing users to minimize the website on their computers and come back to the game as they please. This user-friendly format boosts the average number of minutes a visitor spends on any given pop-under to 3.5 minutes per interaction, directly engaging the user with the Orbitz brand for more than six times longer than an average TV commercial, creating a truly captive audience.

Game addicts who visit OrbitzGames.com will also notice a distinct resemblance to current Orbitz offline initiatives, such as the recent television spot featuring Wink Martindale as host of a classic game show. 15 letters strategically incorporated the commercial's retro theme and flashing marquis borders throughout the OrbitzGames.com site, creating a kitschy, retro flair and allowing consistent brand messaging in both the online and offline world.

"This campaign continues to gain momentum and popularity with the release of each new game," said Mr. Rattin. "Thanks to the tremendous buzz users have generated in both the online and offline communities since the inception of the pop-unders in 2001, the games have continued to break through the typical online advertising clutter and helped us showcase their commanding effect on an overall marketing effort."

The OrbitzGames.com website can be found at www.orbitzgames.com, and includes an archive of all the Orbitz pop-unders that have been unveiled since 2001.