Here's what you call effective advertising: instead of turning to television advertisements that rely on passive reception, advertisers from Saatchi & Saatchi L.A. decided to use an ingenious marketing method for the Toyota Yaris that calls for a more active participation: video gaming.

And no, we're not talking about blatant product placements in video games. The advertising firm came up with the idea and the game design for the Toyota Yaris game - simply titled Yaris - which will be available in XBLA starting Wednesday as a free(!) downloadable racing title.

For a free game, Yaris does pack a wallop: nicely-rendered graphics and surreal environments reminiscent of Wipeout. And how surreal it is: a cybernetic tentacle stretches out from the Yaris' hood, aiming at enemies while racing along the tracks. Does the tentacle come with the Yarises of real-life? We wish.

It happens sometimes, you want to order some pizza or Chinese food but you can't remember the delivery number or at times you can't even remember the name of the restaurant or the pizza place. If you're a terrrible cook like me, this scenario could be like your very own version of Groundhog Day - in the sense that it happens over and over again and you don't know why.

So what should a pizza place do when people wanna talk about their product and if they want an instant customer recall? Well, you need not to get those really big billboards or high tech signages to get the consumer's attention. You need innovative ideas that may be low-tech but still ticks. Just like Papa John's Pizza's ads. Although a pizza guy eternally present at your eyehole peeper is quite creepy (it is as if you have a stalker or something), you gotta admit that it works.

Created by Saatchi & Saatchi, Peru, this clever, yet simple idea in promoting Papa John's Pizza won gold at the recent Cannes International advertising awards. Nice, amusing, and short - elements of a brilliant ad. Nice work!