On ClickZ, writes a very interesting article on the "engagement" idea in online marketing. I'm so happy to hear her point of view on this topic!

One thing's for certain: engagement as the objective of your next marketing campaign doesn't make a lot of sense, at least until we've figured out how to definitively measure the results.

It's amazing how many times we concentrate all our attention on the "beauty" of a website, on how it is funny or on its viral potentials etc... and we therefore miss the key points any online effort should bear in mind: which are the marketing and communication objectives of my online campaign? Who am I trying to reach?

Viral marketing applications can also be effective where engaging consumers is concerned if they serve a purpose beyond just that. Take a moment to recall some of the most popular viral videos and interactive tools and you'll realize their success wasn't measured in their ability to engage alone.

London agency Franki & Jonny have created an interesting (and rather scary) website for the movie Alien Autopsy.

If you don't mind seeing some blood around the screen, then navigate the site and conduct the autopsy on the alien to discover the site content. Kudos for the creepiest navigation idea ever :-)

In The Netherlands travel site EasyCamp has launched an online competition to target "Oranje Vrouwen" (Orange Ladies, aka the wives of Holland's football team supporters). The World Cup "survial quiz" challenges women to find out whether they will survive or succumb to their husbands during Germany 2006. Women are asked a series of football related questions, and for each answer they provide they can "preview" the reaction of their men.

The idea of targeting the "desperate housewives" during the World Cup is not 100 percent original (see this Swiss campaign, for example), but it's nice to see advertainment ideas with sense of humor. The Oranje Vrouwen concept is very good, but unfortunately it hasn't been fully exploited: the interactivity is rather low and quiz is kind of slow, anyway, again, congrats for the cool idea.

A cool Tv spot for a weird shoe: the new Adidas +F50 Tunit ad by Metaphrenie.

Mercedes introduces its new S500. And it has eight airbags...

[via Autoblog.nl]

Sony is online with an excellent idea: the PSP Art Gallery, created by Swedish agency Projector.

The Portable Gallery showcases art, film and music created by Scandinavian artist for the PSP. The digital artworks currently online have been created by artists invited by Sony, but there is also an "Open Zone" where everyone can submit works. The site is very nicely designed and features an interesting horizontal navigation which perfectly recreates the experience of visiting an exhibition in a (offline) museum.

Le Journal du Net (in French) features an interesting article on a B2B viral campaign launched in France to promote the new frozen pizza brand "Freschetta". The website Jaipleindetrucsdansmamalette.com has received about 1500 visits in a month. Not a good result, you might say, but Marc Chirron, marketing director at Schwan's France will not agree: the mini-site has been promoted only with a print ad on a large-scale trade retail magazine and with an overall investment of 10.000 euros. Fraschetta has also reported a good feedback from sales representatives currently taking the orders for the pizza distribution.

Is the viral site funny? I don't know. Probably my French is not good enough to appreciate its humorism, or maybe Italians have a different sense of humor than Frenchs :-)

What are the five things that Digital Creative Directors think they should learn off traditional agencies? Well when Creative Social (www.creativesocial.com) last met in Barcelona they said:
- Charge properly for our work including Online work that goes offline and paid for pitches
- Properly introducing strategic planning to everything we do, by understanding the clients brands better
- Relationship management – Harnessing client relationships that will last decades not just years
- How to present our work in its greatest light
- Recruitment including Selling our industry to the next generation of talent, Investing in our people with training and PR-ing the great work our industry can do.

The next event is in New York later this week so if you want a topic discussed, please e-mail [email protected].

A great campaign by Virgin Atlantic which uses the fictional character of Yutaka, a Japanese programmer, to showcase London through an amusing and slick site (yutakaloveslondon.com). My favourite part is the ability to raise London bridge in real time and broadcast a message to London through one of the screens in Piccadilly Circus (www.yutakaprojects.com).

In The Netherlands, the SpinAwards 2005 (aka interactive marketing awards) are announced. Thirteen winners in nine categories received either a golden or silver Spin. Interactive agencies Lost Boys and Media Republic both collected two awards, while Euro RSCG 4D received an award for best agency. Heineken Netherlands got awarded for best interactive advertiser. Below you'll find the total list of cases and winners.

On BrandRepublic (sub. req.) John Wood, MD at Beechwood Marketing writes:

Anyone who works in marketing who hasn't visited myspace.com is already out of touch with the youth sector. And once you have visited, you may start by wondering what on earth it is, and why it has been so successful (...). Like a teenager's bedroom, the site is a mess from a design point of view (...). If you want to get inside the heads of the global youth market, this site should be every marketer's reference.

Take note.

Get your marketing message delivered directly into people's ears, and do it in a (rather) cheap way. Just launch a podcast service, or if you dare just a little bit more, create your own online and mobile (!) radio station.

Two recent examples of "audio marketing" (I know it a bad naming! any better idea?):
- Amazon has just debuted on the Web with Amazonwire, a podcast featuring exclusive interviews with authors, musicians, movie directors and other people behind the products they sell (via Random Culture).
- Bacardi has just presented BACARDI B LIVE Radio which will stream exclusive music content 24/7 through the Internet and directed to mobile phones across the world. On Mobhappy you find a good analysis of this idea.

To promote milk you can either say it's healthy and good for your bones, or... you can go viral...
See for example what POSTV has created in The Netherlands for Friesche Vlag. Funny or disgusting? You decide...

Found on Marketingfacts (NL).

A nice Tv spot by Coca-Cola to celebrate the passion for football on the way to Germany 2006.
I've found the ad (via YouTube) in two languages: French, to support France and Spanish to support Argentina. Probably there are even more localized versions of the spot out there, and the main reason why I post it is to highlight the power and the appeal of YouTube.

ihaveanidea has collected an impressive number of video interviews directly from Palm Springs, where the jury recently met to evaluate the entries.

The official website of the Clio Awards is here.

Morningwood, an American retro/punk/new wave/garage band, found a whole new (and great) way of promoting their new single. They launched a Wet T-Shirt Contest advergame that definitely attracts many men (including me). It takes some time to load, but it’s worth waiting for..

Google Earth is turning into a multimedia educational tool but, most of all, into a powerful solution for online marketing. Recently we have been seeing a several campaigns using the Google Earth to challenge and entertain users (see, for example Fiat and Adidas just to name a few).

AdAge (reg. req.) has a good article on National Geographic and Discovery partnering with Google Earth to integrate their content offer and keep their readers abreast of ongoing expeditions.

MarketingSherpa.com has collected and reviewed over 100 viral campaigns, now it presents the top 12.
Very interesting to read to get inspiration, but also to learn a few basic lessons on viral marketing:
a) You can create a successful viral campaign even with a tiny budget (and I mean, under 1000$)
b) If you want to seed, use blogs
c) Send out press releases with optmized keywords, it works
and last, but not least:
d) A true viral campaign gets forwarded because consumers are compelled to do so by the glory of the content, not because you bribed them with points

If you have 5 minutes to waste, and you aim at expanding your "poo-bililites" play the "Whose Poo" advergame on the Denver Zoo website.

Sorry, not direct link, you'll find a small banner on the right side of the homepage. Yes, it's kind of hidden in the site... and yes, you can wonder why ;-)

Again, I'm a little bit late... In Germany Mini has been running for a few weeks a video blog.

Sorry I'm a little bit late with this post, the competition actually finished last week, but it's too silly not to mention it. The Scottish Tourist board has been running an online competition called "Date a Hot Scot", which asked visitors to vote for the most good looking Scot and enter the chance of winning a trip to Scotland. The campaign has been running for a few weeks in France, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Germany, now it's over but I feel like I haven't missed much.

From Germany, two brand new websites by Elephant Seven, both of them dedicated to the writing concept.
The first is the new Montblanc site, created to celebrate the 100th birthday of the luxury pens (and not only) producer. A good example of a boring website, surely stilylish, but unable to express the uniqueness of the brand.

The second site is www.briefschreiben.de (writing letters), which is currently being supported also with online ads. The idea of the site is to promote the use of "snail mail", letters, postcards, etc... I mention it since it's another example of National Post services doing online marketing. There's nothing really special on it, but it's useful as a benchmark. However, most of all it's useful to remind us the pleasure of writing (and receiving) a letter.

The UK Army is currently trying to have the first Briton on top of Mount Everest. The Everest West Ridge expedition is supported with a website featuring reports and footage from the three expedition teams as they climb three separate peaks in the Himalayas.

The site is definitely a must see, since it contains all the ingredients currently available for a perfect online marketing recipe: video interviews, a blog with RSS feed, a podcast, mobile text alerts and an integration with Google Earth. Too bad I don't know the agency behind the site, since the did are doing a very good job integrating (and keeping up-to-date) such a huge amount of content.

News via Brand Republic.

A silly but cool website for Kraft Foods. Nice concept created by FCBi, it's a good example of interactivity using videos (see "this dude will eat anything). I love Flash 8! :-)

Jung von Matt, Germany for an exposition dedicated to Salvador Dali.

[via A/D Goodness]

If you enjoy creepy websites and cats are NOT your favourite pet, have a look at Samurai Kitten, a crazy (advertainment?) website created by Cog1 to promote IFC's anime show Samuri 7.

In Germany Fanta has re-launched its to match its current promotional concept "Bamboocha".

The site, created by Neue Digitale is colorful and rich of content, but could have been pushed more with audio and interactivity. In my opinion it has a very nice interface not exploited at its max, and animations which focus more on estethics than on interaction.

The guys at Zugara have been doing quite a lot of interesting stuffs lately (NFL Draft for Reebok, and Tourist Trophy Site for PlayStation for example), but my favourite is definitely Re-Mission.net for Hopelab. Why? Because it's great to see interactivity applied to illness support, especially when it comes to children fighting against cancer. HopeLab is a non-profit organization that combines rigorous research with innovative solutions to improve the health and quality of life of young people with chronic illness. The Re-Mission.net site was created as a community area for children and adults living with cancer.

The Barbarian Group has created an extremely simple but also very good advergame for Red Bull and its Flugtag.

I like it a lot because it perfectly fits the Flugtag day concept. After playing it you will not say "wow! look how cool is this game" but rather "cool! this is what Flugtag is about!". It's a game which delivers a marketing message, and unfortunately even if advergames are now so popular, this is not so common.

To find out what Flugtag is, click here.

If you're looking for something weird but funny and kind of creative, check out the Spanish site of the new Renault Megane. Everything starts from a cartoon style TV ad which becomes (a little bit) interactive and invites users to find out more about its strange characters.

Created by Orbital BBDO Madrid, I think it's a good example of how what you can do online even if you only have a TV or print ad as starting point.

About two months before the kick off in Germany, football ads start inundating our TVs. I love this new ad by Adidas (done by 180 Amsterdam, I suppose) which really transmits joy and passion for playing.

And it's also shot in Amsterdam, my favourite city in the world. Of course after my hometown, Trieste ;-)

Kudos to my colleagues of the Diesel online creative team and to Hi-ReS! for the new Cabinet of Vision website for Diesel Jewellery.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

In The Netherlands, the Spin Awards (aka interactive marketing awards) are about to be assigned. Even is the language can be a problem, I suggest checking out the awards website, where all the top campaigns of 2005 are showcased.

The winners will be announced in two weeks, I'll keep you posted and I will share (and translate) the best campaigns. If any of the shortlisted agencies will help me with the translation, I will definitely appreciate it :-)

From Italy a video (viral?) featuring Freddy Krueger (yes, the guy from Nightmare) eating chips. Sorry but I really don't like the association of such an horrible monster with food. I find it rather disgusting.

In order to fully understand it, you need to know that when you eat the Fonzies, you can't help licking your fingers...

via Ninjamarketing.

Adland has turned 10!

But don't worry, despite the age, it's still the best archive of commercials out there.
Congrats for the great job to Dabitch, the Grandma of advertising blogs :-) a person whose passion for advertising is an inspiration for all of us writing about it.

Since I will receive my new Polo in less than a month, I definitely enjoyed this new ad by DDB London for Volkswagen Polo. A little bit sad, rather classy and very subtle.

Welcome to Sant'Agata Bolognese, home of Lamborghini. An advert by Philipp und Keuntje GmbH recently awarded at the Art Directors Club Germany awards.

[via Autoblog.it, thanks Filippo!]

I loved watching 24 on TV so I've been immediately very curious when Mark emailed me the link to their new integrated campaign for 24: The Game. As you can see from the screenshot below, the teaser is simple but effective, and immediately grabs visitors' attention. But the campaign of course isn't just about this gimmick, it develops through two online films personalized for the subscribers of the Sony Playstation newsletter.

As Mark Riley, planning director at 20:20 London (the agency behind the campaign) explained me, the story in the game involves Jack Bauer's search for his daughter Kim who has been kidnapped (story based on events between series 2 and 3 of TV programme). Gamers on the Sony Entertainment, PlayStation database received an html email that linked them to a personalised internet film, in the film Jack Bauer is seen sending an SMS to CTU (headquarters) asking them to contact YOU (your name appears in the text he's writing), then in minutes you receive an SMS on your cellphone, it asks for your help and gives you a unique URL to go to.

Spring has arrived, and we breathe some fresh air also on the Web. This week two chewing gums have launched their new online marketing efforts:
1. Dentyne ICE has debuted with a watch, vote and get a pack website.

2. EVB has launched a celebration of "cool breath power" for Winterfresh. Nice and weird interface.

I really like what Adidas is currently doing online with its Adicolor campaign. It's a rich and (of course) colorful concept they are devoloping with wit. The Adicolor mini-site isn't really a "mini" website, since it features a lot of content to explain the Adicolor idea and engage users to submit their own interpretation of the shoe.

Adidas scores the first point linking consumer generated content (the shoe design) with the offline tangible world: the winner of the White series competition will have his shoe produced in a limited edition of 50 products. 25 will be allocated to the winner and 25 will go on sale to the public.

Via Campaign Brief a new viral campaign for Virgin Loans launched in Australia starring Mr Virgin himself (aka Richard Branson). The video is ment to be quite sexy, but it doesn't really have that "something" to become viral. Probably the only reason why people will pass it is to tell friends "look how crazy Branson is". Is this enough? Is this good for Virgin as a brand? Probably in both cases the answer is yes. But I find the video rather drab.

Are looking for more cool interactive ideas? Check the archives