successful or noteworthy online marketing campaigns?

July 7, 2004 12:47 PM

Remember any successful or noteworthy online marketing campaigns? [mo' 'nside]

What are some particularly impressive or noteworthy or effective or memorable online marketing efforts you've seen? Many people can recall their favorite radio or TV or print ads years later, but what about particularly worthy online equivalents? Any favorite contests, promotions, games, mini-sites, enticements, what have you? My employer would like for me to come up with some examples for a presentation we're putting together for a prospective client. For NDA reasons I can't say much more than that, unfortunately. Anyway, I have couple examples - Pepsi's free music offer, for instance - in mind, but I wager y'all could come up with some better ones. Work sucks. I wish it was fall, already.

posted by ChasFile to computers & internet (20 answers total)

Those X-10 camera pop-unders.
posted by scarabic at 12:53 PM on July 7, 2004

The Beast promoting A.I. was pretty badass.
posted by Capn at 12:57 PM on July 7, 2004

The TiVo giveaway and Rubberburner. I think Buddy Lee started as an online campaign as well? I get Rubberburner and Buddy Lee mixed up sometimes. They look a lot alike.
posted by iconomy at 1:06 PM on July 7, 2004

Well it's not strictly marketing, but the whole MoviePoopShoot site that was used as a fakey entertainment web site during the movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, as well as a sort of "in the know" site before the movie which was used to hide the trailer for the upcoming film. I'm not sure -- since I learned about a lot of this after seeing the film -- how the URL was released to Kevin Smith fans, but it was a fun tie-in with the movie. The hackthematrix site wasn't bad either
posted by jessamyn at 1:16 PM on July 7, 2004

Howard Dean 2004.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 1:16 PM on July 7, 2004

The internet marketing campaigns for the movies A.I. (see Wired), Minority Report (archived here) and the Blair Witch Project (wikipedia) all stand out in my mind.

Also, BMWfilms.com.
posted by Jeff Howard at 1:19 PM on July 7, 2004

I forgot Super Greg, which was also a Lee campaign. It tied in with Rubberburner, I think.

Also see this weblog entry.
posted by iconomy at 1:26 PM on July 7, 2004

A lot of people seemed to like Subservient Chicken
posted by revgeorge at 2:09 PM on July 7, 2004

A second on BMW films.

Also, Blair witch project.
posted by filmgeek at 2:39 PM on July 7, 2004

CueCat - noteworthy in its spectacular failure.
posted by falconred at 2:49 PM on July 7, 2004

I remember this one banner ad that contained a very nice pong game. I think it was HP that did it, but I'm not totally sure. It got quite a bit of attention several years ago.
posted by edlundart at 3:00 PM on July 7, 2004

I'm not quite sure why everyone here seems so eager to do your freakin' job for you. I take it I'm free to post my homework here whenever I want and ask you all to do it for me?

(I probably wouldn't have posted this if it hadn't been for "For NDA reasons I can't say much more than that, unfortunately". That just rubbed me up the wrong way.)
posted by reklaw at 3:14 PM on July 7, 2004

BMWfilms.com did much to launch the careers of several directors.

What about those instant messaging bots that were all over AIM? Smarterchild and that Swim Fan movie one? The Radiohead one too.

I disagree with the one about Pepsi's free music offer though. By the time the bottles and cans containing codes arrived out here (and I'm a mere half-hour-ish north of Los Angeles) the contest was already over and the codes un-redeemable.
posted by Lizc at 3:54 PM on July 7, 2004

Believe it or not, no. I put my mind to it, but I can't recall any advertising campaign, online or not, leaving an impression on me. Oh, except maybe that "where's the beef?" old lady, but that was offline. And I was an impressionable kid at the time.

Most of the things mentioned above don't sound familiar to me.

A negative result is still data, right?
posted by majick at 7:05 PM on July 7, 2004

The only ads I've ever played with online were the Absolut Vodka ads embedded in Salon.com articles. They were fairly unobtrusive if you weren't doing anything to them, but they had fun, quick games that you could mess with.

Good because they wouldn't do anything if you didn't want them to, but fun to play with when you wanted that.

Of course, I say this as I protectively clutch my Smirnoff, so ymmv.
posted by Coffeemate at 9:04 PM on July 7, 2004

There was a Discover banner ad which looked like a supermarket checkout with groceries running by that I just thought was the cutest, nicest-looking ad I've ever seen online.

It did not make me want to get a Discover card though. But it was fun to watch.
posted by catfood at 3:14 AM on July 8, 2004

Not a campaign per se, but I've yet to see anything much more effective in stimulating interest/feeding frenzy than the invite only Gmail roll-out.
posted by squealy at 5:29 AM on July 8, 2004

I'm not quite sure why everyone here seems so eager to do your freakin' job for you. I take it I'm free to post my homework here whenever I want and ask you all to do it for me?

I didn't ask them to do my work for me, I asked them for their opinion. There have been favorite movie, music, desktop themes, and childhood nickname threads on askMe before, so what's wrong with a favorite online ads thread? And yes, I have seen several people post questions related to homework or research or work they are doing, ("How can I get a getter google ranking / more traffic at my site? How can I parlay traffic into profits?" are particularly popular questions. I've also seen several "How do I properly cite this work?" and "Where can I find information on academic topic x?" threads) so feel free. I've also seen people ask for driving directions and solutions to problems only happening on their computers. As a community we long ago decided that this was a forum for answers to an individual's questions, not a depository of resources universally helpful for everyone.

I'm sorry if I rubbed you the wrong way, but perhaps the reason people are trying to help is because that's what this system is here for. Thanks, everyone
posted by ChasFile at 7:02 AM on July 8, 2004

Let's not forget these two
posted by scarabic at 11:01 AM on July 8, 2004

I liked the Skittles Chew the Clue game.
posted by SisterHavana at 11:50 PM on July 9, 2004