I am amazed at how far we’ve come with advertising – especially online advertising. Advertising used to be a one-sided conversation – marketers talking AT consumers rather than with them. However, I recently came across an ad that has done a good job at involving consumers and interacting with them in their advertising. Lately, I’ve noticed companies creating mini sites where consumers can upload their own pictures and create new characters. You can find some of these at sites like www.becomeanmm.com.
However, there is one site in particular that goes a step further. The new movie Meet the Spartans, a parody to the movie 300 has developed a mini site off their main one at www.carmenhasacrushonyou.com. In this site, you enter your name (or a friend’s), a phone number and a photo. The site then creates a custom video that includes you (or your friend) as Carmen’s secret crush – complete with a photo in her album and a tattoo of your name on her butt. To top it off, she will make a phone call to her crush (at the number entered) to tell you she misses you and to set up a date to see the movie.
This ad is brilliant on a few levels. First, the target audience for the movie is likely 18-29 year old boys. Of these boys, who wouldn’t want to date Carmen Electra? Second, it gets them involved and interacting with one of the characters, complete with a video they can embed into their MySpace pages. And finally, it reinforces going to see the movie repeatedly (although subtly), which many of them will – even if it is just to see Carmen Electra.
Congrats to the agency who created this interactive ad. Very well done.
1 comments:
They've been doing stuff like this for quite a while... there are the sites that help you characterize yourself... like an m&m or a Simpsons character. The other sites like the one on Carmen Elctra are good too, but have also been around for a while... and are called aninotes. There used to be an entire website devoted to them, the helped with the launch of the Mighty Mouse video (Chris.youaremighty.com, also they have doyouhaveepilepsy.com) that helped spur interest in a job hunting website (jobsite.com). I used to send the you are mighty one to employees as a link all the time to boost morale... it works. :) They send it back to me sometimes too. Very creative, innovative, and uplifting products. Kind of a new internet fad of sorts.
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