Nivea has started a partnership with MSN Italia to feature a sponsored section of the portal in the Health & Wellness channel. The sponsorship will last six months and the site content will be updated every two weeks. A series of online ads will be shown on the portal to drive traffic to the special section.

Eagle Pictures has launched an advergame connected to an online competition to promote the Italian release of the movie "Blade Trinity". A special section on the popular website Tuttogratis presents the game, which isn't particularly engaging. Anyway, users that manage to play it to the end have the chance to win the official ringtone.

The ABC tv series "Lost" is coming to The Netherlands. It will start on March 4th on NET 5. There is an interesting video promoting the show. Digital agency LaComunidad developed the viral 'Lost' concept and the micro site, it also took care of the seeding strategy and tracks the worldwide results of the campaign with its patented tracking technology ViralTracker. Igor Beuker, MD of LaComunidad says:"SBS wants to learn how viral can help to increase it's number of viewers at new and important TV series. LaComunidad wants to prove that online buzz marketing besides internet commercials also works for TV series and movie trailers".

A new video ad by Atari is entitled "The Jefferson Parliament Bomber Footage" and is supposed to promote the new videogame "Act of War". I'm not sure how many people will actually enjoy this video, but as the fact that I'm posting about it shows, it will generate a buzz. The video is available at www.how-safe-are-we.com and is currently ranked at the top of the viral chart. Produced by Maverick Media this is a creepy video "inspired" (!?) to September 11th, showing an air attack to the British parliament... marketers, please don't push it too hard...

Sony has built in the ability to order pizza in its latest multiplayer game "Everquest II". By typing the command "/pizza" players are taken to the Pizza Hut website where they can place an order. Dailypress reports Sony plans to add a function to have the pizza bill to be charged within the monthly game subscription.
The ideal solution for lazy hard players...

24/7 Real Media will provide the platform to deliver WAP advertisements across Vindigo's suite of mobile products. Robert Tas, senior vice president, technology and media for 24/7 Real Media commented: "Mobile marketing is the next evolution of online advertising. As online advertising continues to gain its share of marketing dollars, advertisers will continue to push the boundaries of online marketing. Using 24/7 Real Media's Open AdStream platform with Vindigo's products and services will demonstrate the benefits of standardized trafficking, tracking, reporting and targeting for mobile marketing."

Mobile advertising is fighting back (see also O2 serving mobile contextual ads), but I don't believe things will be so easy as Mr Tas presents them.

Hiton Worldwide Resorts has launched an advergame to promote its 46 romantic retreats. There is a game, called Cupid's Catapult' game, in which players help Cupid deliver gifts to their lover, who awaits them on the balcony of a cartoon resort. Players that score above a certain threshold can enter a prize draw to win a romantic holiday for two at the five-star Hilton Mauritius Resort & Spa.
The game has been created by the agency Neuxpower. The initiative will be supported by online advertising, emails to Hilton's marketing database and leaflets in all 15,000 Hilton bedrooms in the UK.

Bagel Factory has launched a viral game called ''Bagel Bonanza' produced by SugarShaker. The game themed on a game-show and is giving away 25,000 free bagels and cups of PG2GO as prizes to encourage trial and footfall into Bagel Factory stores. Winning players receive a voucher by email which they can redeem immediately at any of the 45 UK Bagel Factory stores. Play it online at: www.bagel-bonanza.com.

Condoms brand Akuel has launched a new advertising campaign featuring Tv spots and co-branded websites with MSN.it and Virgilio.it. Akuel City has an advertainment approach aiming at attracting and entertaining visitors. Given the kind of product they had to promote, Publicis Dialog, did an excellent creative job. Watch the videos on MSN, even if they are in Italian, I'm sure you'll understand ;-)

Ogilvy Interactive Frankfurt has created a new online campaign for Cisco Systems, starring a fictional hacker named Bruno H. By clicking on a Cisco banner, users virtually connect to Bruno's desktop where they find his blog notes about a so called "Self-Defending Network" he cannot hack. The desktop offers further interactive options, like reading Bruno's email (containing also Cisco's banners) or find out how Bruno's girlfriend (Cisca!) looks like. Double click on each item on the desktop to find out more.

Celebrating its 20th birthday, Trivial Pursuit has created an online challenge. Players are asked with six questions, at the end of the quiz they can submit their score and a draw to win a Trival Pursuit 20th Anniversary Edition Game.
The site was created by Skive Creative which of course added a "mail to a friend" link to spread the word around.

MSN has taken extremely seriously the recent launch of its new search engine. The have produced tons of ads appearing on Tv, radio and internet web sites. Now, following the current fashion "if it isn't viral it won't work", they have asked 42 Entertainment to create a viral campaign. Just to be "original", they have decided to star six bloggers in the campaign.
MSNfound is the site where everything takes place...
As the people commenting the news on Adrants said, this is not a viral campaign. I feel like at MSN they just wanted to appear "trendy". They used "bloggers", they produced a "viral", two things everybody talks about today on the Internet. Unfortunately what they actually created lacks of originality and I'm not sure it will be worth remembering.

Italian ISP Tin.it has launched an online campaign to promote its new ADSL offer. The creativity is by Olà, the planning is by Media Italia, with dhtml, screen-ad, pop-under and banners running among the others on Virgilio.it, Msn and Mtv.

Earlier this month Olà has also created a series of ads for the online bank Fineco, running on the main Italian portals since February 14. The online efforts supports a multi-channel campaign with Tv spots, print and radio ads.

This post's title has nothing to do with RSS, this time "feed" is related to "food", and to the new campaign launched by Jamie Oliver (a famous English cook) to promote healthy nutrition. The idea is to ban the junk and get fresh, tasty and, above all, nutritious food back on the school dinners menu. The Feed Me Better web site, created by Poke London, features an online petition to collect as many signatures as possible to be shown the government.

Lycos Dating Service is a new search engine based on database containing millions of profiles and photos. The data come from iMatchup.com, LoveAccess.com, Tickle, True.com, and Lycos' own Matchmaker.com. The index of Lycos Dating Search will be refreshed daily and use of the search engine will be free. Lycos will sell ads and charge partner dating sites for every click they will receive.

Comic Relief has run a viral challenge for Red Nose Day 05 and thirty agencies pitched ideas for viral games and movies. Inbox Digital was one of five agencies chosen to produce viral work that appears on the Red Nose Day website. The viral game, Speedy Relief, aims at driving traffic to the site of the charity organization Comic Relief. The game received a big push last week by Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles who talked about it during its radio show. 100,000 players joined the game in the two hours following Moyles’ programme.

Transport for London (TFL) will change marketing strategy over the next two years, shifting most of its annual advertising budget online. New Media Age (reg. req.) reports TFL will launch in April two integrated campaigns, to promote the Journey Planner service and to push the sales of the Oyster card system.

The new Mitsubishi Colt is promoted in Belgium with an emotional touch, which reminds the LoveMarks concept introduced by Saatchi & Saatchi. Digimedia (in Dutch) reports the agencies Hypervision and Tequila have worked together to create the campaign which takes advantage of the Internet as well as of Tv advertising. Online the new Colt CZ3 is promoted with a dedicated section on the dating site Rendez Vous, to stress the seductive character of the new car. The microsite also feature a competition to win "a perfect rendez-vous" with the new Colt CZ3. Singles as well as engaged people are invited to enter the contest, the Colt CZ3 says she isn't jealous.

Marketingfacts (in Dutch) reports about an interesting campaign run by Peugeot in Poland to promote its new 407. 407 is the number of an apartment to discover where users can interact with a wide range of objects corresponding to different 407's characteristics. For example, the flowers in the kitchen table represent the ecology, the magazine on the table features the news, the sofa is related to the car's comfort and so on. By clicking on the objects the user can read the full info.

Nancy Dell’Olio, the girlfriend of Sven Goran Eriksson, trainer of the England football team, is the host of a new online quiz created by Midasplayer for the British Red Cross. In the game, called "The Quiz Queen" Nancy introduces the players to the game takes them through the question. Netimperative reports up to to five contestants can play each multiplayer game. Players can decide to play competitively for a 35p stake 50% of all proceeds from the game go to The British Red Cross.

The shortlists for the Revolution Awards 2005 have been announced. Eight companies are competing to win the Agency of the Year award: Dare Digital, Glue London, Grand Union, i-level, Profero, Quantum, The Usability Group and Unique Digital.
Among the others, Dare Digital is running for six awards with four projects , all developed for the mobile industry: Sony Ericsson - K700i, O2 - Free Sim, Sony Ericsson - P910 and O2 - Friends.

All Things Video is a beta program launched by Viewpoint to measure the effectiveness of online video ads. The initiative aims at comparing video ads with other conventional advertsing solutions, Tv included.
Several big names (Hyundai, Microsoft Office, Pepsi, and 20th Century Fox) will take part to the program, with campaigns using Viewpoint's transitional, pre-roll, and in-page formats (by Unicast).

Mobile carrier O2 is sponsoring the English rugby team in the Six Nations Championship and it's promoting its support with an online initiative. Revolution explains rugby fans are challenged with an interactive quiz. The campaign, developed by Agency Republic, is characterized by an high level of interactivity, aiming at engaging England supporters with O2's brand.

The winners of the annual PlanetOut Advertising Awards, have been announced this week. The PlanetOut network is a leader in gay media with over 3.3 million active register users, and the awards are assigned to the campaigns showing innovation and excellence in advertising within the gay and lesbian community.

The winners are:

Black & Decker has appointed Mailtrack to create a pan-European email campaign in order to learn more about its customers and prospects. Mailtrack will create a series of competitions to win products and to profile people through a questionnaire. The initiative will run in Italy, Spain and France.

There isn't much out there to "celebrate" Valentine's day online. After last year's Love Tatoo I would have expected to find more viral ideas playing with the Valetine's concept.
I just found out about this online game by Indian agency Innoken which has launched "Be My Valentine" (which isn't exactly an advergame). In Italy, icecream brand Algida has created a special site for "San Valentino" promoting its Magnum icecream as a Forbidden Fruit.
Virgin Mobile Australia has launched a viral campaign for Valentine's day, called Dr. Date (via Random Culture).
There is something more in the mobile industry. In Germany Mindmatics has created Valentine Loveline for T-Mobile and Douglas Parfumeries and Enpocket has partnered with Sprint and Match.com to present a Valentine's sweepstake (and promote a new mobile dating service).

Nintendo is working on a multichannel campaign to promote its new console. Emerce reports the Internet part of the effort will be created by Dutch Agency Media Monks. The gaming platform will be launched in Europe at the end of March, and the ads specifically targeting teenagers will go live in several countries, such as The Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, United Kingdom, Italy and Spain.

Procter & Gamble's Tide Coldwater detergent is currently promoted with an online effort with a viral touch. DMNews.com explains the site tide.com lets visitors sign up for a free sample of Tide's newest detergent for washing clothes in cold water as well as refer e-mail addresses of friends. Apparently the campaign is experiencing very good results with a consistent increase in traffic to the site.

The new Levi's Tv spot will be premiered on the MSN European network sites. The ten-seconds commercial will be featured on Msn's homepage from today until February 14th when it will air on Tv.

If you want to see how an excellent advertainment site looks like, check out Nokia's N-Gage Snakes Outbreak. It's extremely entertaining and it has also a viral essence allowing users to text the link to friends. A perfect combination of Internet and mobile.

Valentine's Day searches have increased 172 percent over the past week. It seems like women are short of ideas for this year's presents. Lycos says while Valentine's gifts for him made the top 10 list of most popular Valentine's Day-related searches, Valentine's gifts for her did not. In fact, searches for gifts for him are four times more popular than gifts for her.

The other reason might be that men have already bought a Trilogy for their loved women and don't need other ideas... I'm trying to convince myself this is the reason, not the fact they aren't going to buy any present ;-)

Here you can also check out the most popular Valentine's Day search terms.

Dreamworks has partnered with Tiscali to promote the release on dvd of the movie "Shark Tale". Digital Republic reports Tiscali will host an exclusive movie clip across its broadband service and promote the initiative via email.

Starting from today I've decided to split Adverblog's content in two parts: interactive marketing will still be featured on Adverblog, while mobile marketing and other issues related to the mobile world will have their on space on Mmoom.com.
Making Money Out of Mobile (Mmoom) is in fact a new blog dedicated to mobile marketing and marketing in the mobile industry.

As you can see I've changed Adverblog's layout and one more time I have to thank my brother Marco for the nice graphic he designed. I understand the layout might look a little minimal, but it's surely more practical for blogging.
I've also upgraded the MovableType version which will hopefully help me adding new features (i.e. content subcategories) and comments (if spammers leave us alone). The upgrade has been somehow painful, I've imported all Adverblog's entries, but unfortunately files' names will not match. So if you have old links to single pages on my site they will probably no longer work...

All right, that's about it! I hope you'll enjoy reading both blogs. Feedback and suggestions are always welcome.

Martina

Axe has launched a special Tv ad to celebrate Carnival... Have a look...

Chocolate brand Ferrero celebrates Valentine's Day in Italy with a dedicated web site. The site presents Ferrero's products Valentine's special edition (Mon Cheri, Rocher, Raffaello), a love trivia, and some editorial content with excerpts from famous love stories in the literature (Lancelot and Ginevra, Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra).
The creative is by DGT Media, which also created a series of online ads running on the main Italia portals.

If you're interested in real chocolate wine and Valentines, and you live near Worcester, MA, you might enjoy this event organized by Peter Caputa.

It's winter time for Absolut Vodka which recently launched its Absolut Winter advertainment site. It features drink recipes, new screensavers and The Absolut Hold'em Poker where ten players can play at the same time. Absolut Ads' blog reports you can also download the Absolut Cross Stitching Pattern or Absolut Cut-Out in the shapes of snowflake, for the long winter nights (instead of drinking Vodka ;-)

ClickZ reports the site is supported by online ads running sites like CitySearch, The Onion and About.com. The creativity is by TBWA\Chiat\Day.

An online campaign run by Nivea For Men targeting gay consumers proved to be extremely successful in increasing brand awareness. The effort was launched in the summer of 2004 with ads on Gay.com and PlanetOut.com. The goal was to show an overall increase in aided brand awareness, online ad awareness, message association, gay community support, brand favorability and purchase intent. The results analysis has been carried out by Dynamic Logic which found out a 173 percent in online ad awareness, a 112 lift in message association and a 30 percent growth in purchase intent. Joseph Venezia, Nivea For Men's marketing manager commented:

Spanish Bank "La Caixa" is targeting its young customers with a mobile marketing initiative. In order to strenghten the relationship with over 940.000 people among 18 and 25 years old, La Caixa has launched "LKXA" (it's the way mobile phone users will write La Caixa) a service which will deliver financial and banking information via SMS and email.

On Adfreak Tim Nudd posts about Crispin Porter + Bogusky�s online advertising for Virgin Atlantic. In particular, Tim refers to the "inflight beauty therapy" that Virgin is promoting with unsual rich media ads, with sounds and animations to recreate the idea of a relaxing massage.

To see what Crispin Porter + Bogusky is doing for Virgin Atlantic, you can have a look at their client section.

Virtu Mobile and Campbell Soup have launched "Soup at Hand 3D Snowboarding", a mobile game which apparently should help the food brand getting in touch with young adults. In the press release it is explained that this is a demographic group that does not typically make buying decisions based on traditional media like newspapers, TV and radio. This is surely true. I don't know if this kind of promotion is going to work for Campbell, but it's good to see a well-known brand investing in mobile marketing. It is a step in the right direction. Next, we want to see integration of the mobile effort with other communication channels. It's the surround sound marketing I always love to hear of.

To download the Soup At Hand 3D Snowboarding game or for more information about the game, visit www.sah-mobile.com.

You can love it, you can hate it. But surely you can't stop it. It's the word of mouth, the viral effect that can damage (or even destroy) your brand or can make you a star in a few days. I enjoyed reading a very good article about viral marketing on Le Monde (in French), which usually doesn't cover this kind of issues. Entitled "Les gu�rilleros du net-marketing" the analysis by Yves Eudes, takes us through a series of cases in which the "clients missionnaires" (sort of evangelist clients) have been able to make the difference, either positive or negative, impacting on a brand image. Blogs are surely playing a role in this sense, creating a new category of "web-lobbying" which can no longer be ignored by brands. The article then goes a step further, investigating the power of online communities and the importance to e-commerce sites of users reviews.

Adrants reports Nike has launched a new football, pardon, "soccer" site called "Tiempo". Created by Odopod and ourcommon, it is focused on the Brazilian culture, featuring the message "We are Brazilian. We play happy.", and on the promotion of a new shoe, the Nike Air Legend FG. The site which has a typical Nike's advertainment approach will further develop during the year, taking users around the world with the launch of new sections dedicated to Los Angeles (coming in February), Miami (coming in March) Dallas (in April) and New York City (in May).

Procter & Gamble has hired Aerodeon to create a mobile video game to promote its Head & Shoulders shampoo. Revolution explains the campaign is currently running in France and it's supported with Tv ads and online advertising. The mobile game is a F1 racing game which reminds us this campaign has something in common with the one by Rexona: they both target male users. Are mobile male users more receptive to mobile marketing initiatives?

My Alert Marketing has created in Spain a mobile marketing campaign for Rexona for Men. As Diario Ipmark (in Spanish) reports, the initiative is promoted with on-pack messages and will run until the end of March. Users have to text the word "Rexona" with their sex, age and postal code to a special number. Prizes (products branded Real Madrid) are assigned immediately.

German Agency Planetactive has just created an online pan-European campaign for Samsung to discover the "European Mobile Games Champion". The ads will run in Germany, Italy, UK, Belgium and The Netherlands until February 13th. The campaign includes an email marketing effort and a dedicated micro-site on the Samsung Fun Club Homepage where mobile gamers can find out all the info to join the European Mobile Gaming competition.

Swisscom Mobile, the Swiss Post and The Communication Museum have launched a cool initiative to engage users with MMS. In English it would be called "Swiss Mobile - A Country on the Go" in German it's "Swiss mobil - Ein Land unterwegs". The three partners are going to create the first series of stamps made with photographs taken with camera phones. Swiss citizens are asked to send their own pictures which will be then displayed on www.mms-stamp.ch. Site's visitors will express their vote with an SMS. The best four pictures will be issued as stamps for the collection.

Pickwick Tea has decided to take another step in advertainment promoting its "Afternoon spirit" with an integrated campaign which takes advantage of a tv commercial and an advergame. As Emerce (in Dutch) reports, the campaign is a result of a cooperation among Framfab and .bone. The advergame allows users to win prizes and is working also from a viral perspective. The initiative, which will last until March 6th, is proving very successful, having already registered a 270 per cent traffic increase to Pickwick.nl site since its launch at the beginning of January.

Indian newspapers have dedicated a lot of space to a news coming from Russia where the biggest carrier, Mobile Tele Systems has started offering Kamasutra tips to its subscribers. Russian mobile phone users can listen to the ancient Indian art of love through a 24-hour service which costs about five times more than a regular call, India Daily reports. Another Indian newspaper The Times of India has further investigated the issue, asking a few Indians what they thought about the service. Curiosity and concern for content that might violate the sentiments of Indian people are the main feelings which came out from the interviews. Anyway, with 3G and MMS, the erotic tips, delivered through a voice service, appear to be quite out of date.

Football fans watching the Super Bowl this Sunday will able to use their mobile phones to vote for the best Tv ads. There is always a lot of talk around the TV spots aired during the match, and this is surely the perfect occasion to let US users discover the potentials of mobile messaging.
The idea is by America Online, with the technical support of Mobile 365.
As Wireless Week reports, also THQ Wireless has decided to take advantage of the event, enabling football fans to vote for the MVP of the game. The initiative will run cross-carrier (and this is another good sign for the US mobile industry).

Are you ready to enter the Martian online space? If your answer is yes, than click here and find out the latest advertainment experience offered by the snack Mars. The site, Life on Mars, developed by Tequila\Sydney features some advergames and a few of others strange stuff you could find out if you speak Martian ;-)
(thanks Brigitta!)

Are looking for more cool interactive ideas? Check the archives