EA's marketing leap of faith

Last night, EA made their way to Glasgow's Bellahouston Leisure Centre to promote the vertigo-fuelled Mirror's Edge. The company celebrated the release by staging a parkour coaching session for attendees to relive their favourite acrobatics from the game.

Close to 200 participants showed up to vault over obstacles, balance on beams and bounce off walls. No bones were broken. In fact - there wasn't even enough hard falls to make a 'best of bloopers' reel - all in attendance showed real flair for the parkour.

EA cooled things down by raffling off a host of Mirror's Edge prizes, including an HDTV, Xbox 360, 16 copies of the game and a number of CD soundtracks.

Even though most of the attendees were under the age of 18, most of them hadn't played Mirror's Edge. While previously under the impression that the event was for the game to promote parkour, it soon became apparent that parkour was promoting the game.

Chris Grant is the Director of Glasgow Parkour Coaching. "EA have got it right here," he said. "Instead of making all these flashy adverts, they've got the best guys in the world to come and teach. That's the most important thing about promotion for me - that they come and teach, as opposed to the sensationalism featured in the game."

Mirror's Edge from EA is out now in all high street and online retailers. Check out the above link if you can't go five minutes without monkeying around.