Archive of the 'Viral Marketing' Category

In one of the more innovative online game promotions to come down the broadband pipe, Facebook players in June were offered a peek inside a mysterious box that, they were promised, would change their lives.

Really. It said so right in the URL: www.LifeChangingBox.com. more

Most advertisers interested in running mobile campaigns are caught up in wondering when the channel will break big: amass large audiences for mobile Web or mobile video, build the interconnections to launch nationwide campaigns easily, and rack up a large base of users willing to accept ads and promotions on their phones.

By contrast, Web startup 8coupons.com is content to keep things small and localized—at least for now. The site launched last year as a way to bring the promotional possibilities of Web 2.0 and mobile marketing to the boutiques, bodegas and one-store businesses in Manhattan’s Soho and East Village neighborhoods. more

About five years ago, the Hard Rock Hotel Las Vegas realized it had a bookings issue. Guests were arriving for the weekend on Friday but leaving for home on Sunday, making Sunday evenings around the rock-music-themed lodging and casino kind of a snooze.

Not to mention a cost sink, because beverage sales fell off along with room bookings. The hotel realized it needed to figure out a way to keep some guests over Sunday night and to bolster those revenues. more

If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of a thousand virtual Allen wrenches driving those weird screws and locks into a thousand ghostly Ektorp sofas and Leksvik coffee tables.

This is the day that IKEA brings a selection of its actual home-furnishing inventory into the virtual world of The Sims 2, the life-simulation game that has sold more than a million copies worldwide since its launch in 2000. more

His campaign for the White House is just now shifting into high gear, but Sen. Barack Obama is already a winner… in Cannes, France.

That’s where his Obama Mobile messaging campaign won a 2008 Mobile Messaging award in the non-profit or public-sector category. The accolade was one of five awards handed out by research firm Informa and the mobile industry group 160 Characters at this year’s Global Messaging Conference. And it went to interactive mobile firm SinglePoint and mobile content and platform provider Distributive Networks for the part they played in putting the Obama campaign so effectively onto his supporters’ handsets. more

If you’ve got something to market, there’s nothing like finding a group of consumers already interested in what you’re selling. The search marketing industry is built on what writer John Battelle has called “the database of intentions”: Figure out what people are looking for, then serve up ads they’re likely to find relevant to those desires. Google made $5.2 billion doing just that last quarter. more

TV viewers who grew up in the mid-Atlantic region—I count myself among them—may cherish fond memories of the commercials featuring Tom Carvelas, founder of the Carvel retail soft-serve chain.

Actually, I don’t recall Carvel showing up often in the ads, which usually featured real workers and franchisees self-consciously making ice cream specialties for the camera. Carvel’s contribution to the spots was primarily as voiceover. But what a voice. It’s been described as “gravelly”; in fact, it sounded like he’d been gargling lugnuts. more

The mantra in the early days of the Internet was that “content wants to be free.” The last decade has added some important qualifiers to that, leading YouTube to pull copyrighted material and some big media providers like The New York Times to swing pendulum-like between paid subscriptions and complete availability.

But HarperCollins Publishers says it has seen strong results from a pilot program that follows that Web-pioneer dictum by throwing selected titles up onto the Internet cover to cover, permitting readers to consume them in toto on their PCs. more

Scion, Toyota’s youth-oriented brand within a brand, does marketing differently, to say the least. The car maker has opted for the road less traveled in most of its online promotion, favoring independent film and music festivals, presence in virtual worlds, and hip-hop-flavored video as ways to promote its vehicles. more

Red Bull’s Tahitian wave shoot

Web marketers and developers talk glibly about offering site visitors an “immersive” experience. Quite often, that simply means being able to see all four sides of a running shoe.

But when the creators of a new site from energy drink Red Bull talk about immersion, they’re speaking pretty darn close to literally—as in, being able to look up and see 20-foot Pacific waves curling over your head. more