Comments on: successful or noteworthy online marketing campaigns?

Question: successful or noteworthy online marketing campaigns?

ChasFile — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 12:47:04 -0800

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.

By: scarabic

scarabic — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 12:53:14 -0800

Those X-10 camera pop-unders.

By: Capn

Capn — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 12:57:45 -0800

The Beast promoting A.I. was pretty badass.

By: iconomy

iconomy — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 13:06:42 -0800

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.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 13:16:17 -0800

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

By: stupidsexyFlanders

stupidsexyFlanders — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 13:16:31 -0800

Howard Dean 2004.

By: Jeff Howard

Jeff Howard — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 13:19:07 -0800

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.

By: iconomy

iconomy — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 13:26:19 -0800

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

Also see this weblog entry.

By: revgeorge

revgeorge — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 14:09:37 -0800

A lot of people seemed to like Subservient Chicken

By: filmgeek

filmgeek — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 14:39:35 -0800

A second on BMW films.

Also, Blair witch project.

By: falconred

falconred — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 14:49:43 -0800

CueCat - noteworthy in its spectacular failure.

By: edlundart

edlundart — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 15:00:07 -0800

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.

By: reklaw

reklaw — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 15:14:59 -0800

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.)

By: Lizc

Lizc — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 15:54:35 -0800

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.

By: majick

majick — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 19:05:04 -0800

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?

By: Coffeemate

Coffeemate — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 21:04:42 -0800

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.

By: catfood

catfood — Thu, 08 Jul 2004 03:14:07 -0800

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.

By: squealy

squealy — Thu, 08 Jul 2004 05:29:34 -0800

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.

By: ChasFile

ChasFile — Thu, 08 Jul 2004 07:02:18 -0800

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

By: scarabic

scarabic — Thu, 08 Jul 2004 11:01:05 -0800

Let's not forget these two

By: SisterHavana

SisterHavana — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 23:50:19 -0800

I liked the Skittles Chew the Clue game.