From time to time, I’ll see some marketing ideas that just absolutely blow my mind. I can remember some commercials from my childhood that were cutting edge at the time, but compared to today’s technology, are just being blown away graphically. However, the essence of the creativity still doesn’t change, but evolves with our technology, and we’re getting really, really good at it.
I’m talking about interactive marketing, the hybrid between different media all working together (hopefully) seamlessly. There are many different ‘forms’ of interactive marketing, but it all revolves around the same point: spreading a brand massively by word of mouth. While the every day marketer is becoming more and more adept at using new technology, there are a few small gimmicks that I’ve stumbled upon that have really struck as ingenious.
The Travel Channel: In an effort to gain a younger audience, the Travel Channel decided to the hit 18-35’s right where it hurts; their Facebook. The Travel Channel unleashed a Facebook app titled ‘kidnap’ where users can kidnap their friends and take them to different cities and earn points by answering geographical trivia questions. If you think this might not be a great way to reach your audience, about 2 million Facebook users would disagree. In its first 6 weeks of inception, over 1,700,000 requests were sent, coming out to just over 40,000 requests to friends, by friends, a day.
Pepsi: While Pepsi has always been a heavily promoted brand, they have seen their successes on the big name, big budget advertising methods saved for only the largest of industry powerhouses. However, Pepsi has taken an incredible new step with their big budget Super Bowl ad; refusing to make it. Pepsi has instead launched www.refresheverything.com, an outreach project that invites users to submit ideas for a grant to improve their communities. This site allows anyone to submit an idea for a project, and then allows the site’s users to vote on who is awarded the grant, ranging anywhere from 5 to 250k, awarded monthly. To date, Pepsi has 729 submitted proposals and over 1.3 million in available funding. This project launched under the basis that Pepsi wanted to do something with its advertising that could help a down economy and directly improve people’s lives rather then put on one thirty-second Super Bowl spot.
Lost: ABC’s hit show has always used its fan base to help spread the message and used its web following to create a culture around the show. That’s why this first gimmick could very well be the work of some guy messing around at work instead of a corporate viral team, but the effect is still the same. www.kayak.com, a travel search engine, is either a victim of a fanboy employee gone rogue or a stroke of genius.
Because I’m a nice guy, I did this for you, but if you search for flights originating from Sydney, Australia to LAX on September 22nd, you will see a flight advertised that doesn’t exist. For those of you not familiar with the show, this is the flight and fictitious airline whose crash is the basis of the show. Whether or not anyone ‘officially’ knows its there is a mystery to me, but this little gimmick has received a huge praise from people even outside of Lost-nerd circles.
These examples reflect the creative, interactive, and community oriented vibe that viral marketers crave to design. Even if they are doing little more then talking about their brands, these ideas have exposed themselves to their target audiences a great deal with relatively low cost, quality creative ideas. Viral marketing is beginning to show up everywhere and, as the name suggests, is going to keep spreading and spreading, keeping people like me up all night thinking of the next great way to do it big.
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Wow! This is an amazing concept! And it’s true because I believe I have been used by others for their viral campaigning – yet I didn’t even realize it haha!
It’s funny once you think about how many times you’ve been subjected to viral campaigns or interactive marketing schemes without even realizing it. I guess someone out there has been doing their job!
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Hands down, Apple’s app store wins by a mile. It’s a huge selection of all sorts of apps vs a rather sad selection of a handful for Zune. Microsoft has plans, especially in the realm of games, but I’m not sure I’d want to bet on the future if this aspect is important to you. The iPod is a much better choice in that case.
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I think I’ve read something simillar a few days ago. I don’t remember where, might have been on digg or wikipedia, not sure.
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I am not totally sure whether online banner is affective or not . At times I feel the success of online banners would depend on the nature of advertisement. Recently I have been influenced by an online banner to apply for a credit card. I know for many the use of credit card is part of life especially when you are getting it for 12 months 0% interest free. Without seeing the banner online, I may not have the incentive to approach a bank to use its facility. I understand that my experience is not alien to most of the readers here. I feel online banners can be useful but this would depend on the nature of the advertisment. As long the banner looks easy to read, the success of the product would also be great.
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