In a slot prior to Allan's at the VGG convention, I ran his game, Sweet dreams. For the first time, he was in a game I ran, instead of the other way around.

And now, a brief moment of shame: I get really INTO my games. so much so that i don't see the players, I see the characters. I am bad at learning names, so I tend to stick with character names. So aside from Me and Allan, I'm not quites sure who was in it.
Unfortunately, I also don't remember much of the game itself, because I was running on very little sleep. All I remember is that I had to rush my ending, and that the Demon Guy wound up being a super-wuss.

so instead, what I'd like to talk about is something I did to promote my game at the Con.

Part of the plot I was running was that a new soft-drink brand was starting up, and giving the school money to have an exhibition, with all participants getting free soda from this company. The Soda was called Demon Cola (also, Diet Demon Cola and Mr. D's Root beer "D's has soul - YOURS). So before the con, I made up can labels for each product, (just a quick mock-up) and printed them off. I gave these out to potential players, and I think it helped people get into my game a little. sort of merging the game with reality to the point that they could act like their character would. almost. ish.

Anyway, it made me popular at the con, because I was giving stuff out. It also wound up being fun for people to have a special can, whereas anyone else had a mundane can, and when's THAT fun?

So my question is, is this somewhat common? is there an accepted method for doing this? am I crazy to use a gimmic to bring more players to a game?

thanks, Aaron