The Future of Ads

Experience Prizes Keep Contests Alive

Contests, giveaways and sweepstakes have always been a great way to get a brand in front of a large number of people, but interest in the campaign usually wanes as soon as the winner is announced. To combat that trend, many contests have turned into hunts for the next online cewebrity, where the winner gets a chance to extend their 15 minutes of fame through the sponsor’s social channels (and on the sponsor’s dime) in exchange for extending the life of the campaign in the process.

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Hidden ASCII Art Generates Buzz For Dante’s Inferno

When the team behind the Dante’s Inferno video game hid ASCII art in the source code of many popular websites and then waited for that art to get discovered, they were taking a huge risk, but sometimes big rewards can only come to those that are willing to take equally big risks.

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Gowalla and Incase Team Up For Location-Based Sponsorship

Gowalla, a location-based social network, and Incase, an Apple accessory manufacturer, have teamed up to create one of the first ad campaigns to live exclusively on a location-based social network.

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Google And Virgin America Spent A Day In The Cloud

For The Day In The Cloud Challenge, Google and Virgin found a commonality in the ‘clouds’ and used that commonality to create a rather compelling campaign.

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Dunlop Loops Its Way To Video Success

Tire ads aren't known for being fun or sexy, and usually rely on safety stats and a general feeling of 'that tire won't explode while I'm driving' to motivate you to buy. It doesn't have to be that way however, and Dunlop's recent campaign is just one example of what's possible.

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Ken Block And DC Shoes Make Gymkhana A Viral Video Guarantee

Viral videos aren’t usually made, they’re chosen, but the second Gymkhana video from Ken Block and DC Shoes was born to be viral.

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Electronic Arts Helps Ashton Kutcher Get One Million Twitter Followers

For companies that can't get a celebrity to endorse their product directly, the next best bet may be to just attach themselves to the things that celebrities do and leach off of the associated publicity.

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Skittles Embraces Social Media In A Big Way

Most brands have at least dipped a toe into the waters of social media, but earlier this week, Skittles sent the online world into a tizzy by being the first brand to jump head first into the deep end.

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Coraline Raises The Bar For Influencer Outreach

Wieden+Kennedy’s Coraline campaign is a textbook example of how to build buzz around a product using many different types of outreach.

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Heinz Experiments With Talk To The Plants

We’ve all heard that plants grow better when they have human interaction, but Heinz wants to put that theory to the test with the Talk to the Plant experiment. In addition, they want to prove their slogan that “no one grows ketchup like Heinz”.

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