Magnum Chocolate Lets You Hunt For Chocolate… Around the Internet.

Now this is a cool example of using Web 2.0 to wow your audience. This is a little Flash game from Magnum chocolate (of the Unilever fame) that lets you scour the internet in search of the Ultimate Pleasure. The one complaint I have is that you have to get to the end to actually navigate to Magnum. You can’t just click the logo and jump there if you chose. Minor gripe though, over all this is fabulous.

Buyer beware: You’ll probably lose at least 10 minutes playing this game.

A Software Developer Shows Us How To Do Viral Marketing

iPhone development team taptaptap posted a run down of 10 more useful iPhone tip & tricks on their blog last Friday. They were really good tips. Even as a self-professed iPhone nerd, I didn’t know some of these tips.

I know what you’re asking, “Ok fanboy, what does any of this have to do with social media?”

Well honestly, what’s better than a list of awesome tricks? Even jaded iPhone “experts” are commenting on the post saying it’s the best list of tips they’ve seen. It has almost 650 tweets. That’s pretty decent traffic to the blog of this modest indie developer. taptaptap even took it one step further and integrated little pitches of their own apps into the list.

For each tip, taptaptap included iPhone screen shots showing how the trick works. This is one for the built in Apple camera app:

And then twice they followed the Apple app screenshot with a screen shot of one of their apps and how it it improves on the features of the build in app. This one shows taptaptap’s app, Camera+, and how it differentiates from Apple’s built in camera app:

The integrated pitches were very tasteful, never overbearing and didn’t dominate the post. taptaptap did a great job compiling information they knew was unique and would get people to pass the post around, driving traffic to their site and getting eyes onto their products.

I Hope This Gets To You (And Everyone Else on the Internet…)

I ran across this video on Gizmodo and, well, just watch it first:



I was immediately struck by this video for two reasons: Number one, it pulled at my heartstrings. I must admit that at first, the “aww” factor got me. My husband and I were once in a long-distance relationship and so I get just how meaningful this will be for the video creator’s girlfriend when she does see it (she hasn’t yet).

But then I noted one small fact that Gizmodo was sure to point out: The guy that made it is in a band called The Daylights. It’s a band I could like judging by this song, but I had never heard of them. Until now. Hmm… I think there is a name for this… oh, yeah. Viral marketing. What better way to get people to pass your band’s music along than fueling it with a romantic story, complete with a call-to-action anyone with a soul couldn’t refuse?

Maybe I’m a cynic. When you work in advertising, you start to think about the motives behind everything. Maybe both romance and exposure for his band was this guy’s aim. While the video hasn’t gotten to her yet, the second part seems to be working out well – Katy Perry has tweeted it and he got an interview with The Village Voice. We’ll have to wait and see if his long-distance love is impressed, though I have a feeling she will be.

What do you think? Savvy social media marketing maneuver, or simply a romantic boyfriend sending a sweet message in a big way?