Via Adverblog, a couple of very nice promotional sites that encourage you to play, before giving the company your precious email for them to continue their conversation with you.

The first is to create buzz for a new Australian men’s magazine (Explode) and lets you customise a car (‘Bling My bomb’)with all sorts of accessories, including the girl you want in the passenger seat. It’s a fun interface, perfect for wasting a few minutes at work. However, not too sure about going for Flash8; having only beenout a few weeks the penetration is not high so it introduces a huge barrier before people cannot get to the site. I’d love to see the drop off numbers.

The second is for MacDonald’s. In BBoyBattle, you pick a character and control their dance moves. No use without a fast connection, but slick and fun(but turn down the music which does get tedious.

One final one, Absolut have a addition to their poster campaign, with one advertsing the Beer Festival in Munich. I don’t think there’ll be much vodka on sale duringthe festival, but this is driven from their lifestyle targeting.

Jeff Jarvis is advertising an ad. Or the potential appearance of an ad on his site before it actually reaches the site.

Sometime today (when my webmaster gets off the school bus), a big-ass ad will likely appear atop this page. It’s for a Warner Brothers movie and they came to me, which is cool.

.

A different type of advertising for blogs, bringing them closer to the other types of online advertising spaces. I guess that the types of ads will continue get closer to those on ‘standard’ advertising sites, so we;ll soon have to close those annoying ones that cover the content, forcing you to click something.

Tonm Coates has a tale about spam comments appearing on his blog. But this was not one of the usual random comments offering financial advice, chemicals or various recreational activities, it was a seemingly genuine comment related to the post but placed by a completely fictional character who was created for Cillit Bang advertising. The link posted on the comment went through to this character’s ‘blog’. Instead of deleting it, Tom went throught he effort of tracking the comment down, the trail eventually leading to a marketing company associated with the brand. Now the company has apologised.

The Barry Scott character has appeared in a number of spoof websites and weblogs, created by people unconnected to the Reckitt Benckiser brand. The weblog posting on your site was not endorsed by Reckitt Benckiser or any of the advertising agencies that are mentioned and was a one off error from which lessons have been learnt. We are sorry for any offence it has unwittingly caused.

I’m reading this to say that the character created is no longer in the brand’s control; that people have picked up on the concept and are creating content in that character’s name, either as a spoof or as a facade to hide behind. The lesson learnt could be that you no longer control your creations. If that is the case, who’s next? The alternative is that they ignored a series of comments across blogs created as part of a guerilla campaign until someone seriously called them to task. I think the latter.

Bosch don’t think you should be able to. My dishwasher is having trouble as the water has stopped draining out of it. I can;t find the brouchure to give me some ideas, but no problems I though, it’ll be on the web. Searching for Bosch and diswwaher led me, after a few false click, to the bosch.com customer care page. And apparently, having a small amount of water left inthe bottom is perfectly nomal. Nowhere on theis site could I find detailed info and nor could i find my model. I evntaully tracked the model details down to the UK version of the site. And there is no help at all available here that I can see. Plenty of sales information, but nothng to help me now I’ve bought the appliance. I can re-order the manual, or order service, but nothing to give me a clue to what is going on.

Googling for help led me to a message board, from which I find that this problem is not unusual and that I most likely need to clean out the pump. That may be a little beyond my skillset, so there’s always a plumber.

PSFK (a blog I occassionally contribute to) are supporting a ‘speed-investment’ session (like speed dating, but to get money instead of a night out!). If you have a great idea looking for funding, take a look at the details.

The Juicyfruit website epitomises everything I dislike about consumer sites. All flash based, poor navigation, unwanted sounds, no information and jumping on whatever bandwagon is currently hot, in this case blogs, a word that poorly describes the blurb that lists all the ways the the product ‘helps’ someones life. Finding out what the product is was my first challenge (i don’t usually use gum).

Often TV shows have accompanying websites; of they are good they add value to the show, a good exmaple being the Lost site that I looked at hte other week. In some cases, a brand puts up a site that supports their sponsorship of a TV programme; my emplyer has done this is the US and the UK with Baileys and Smirnoff.. But P&G are now turning it round in launching a TV show of the website. their Home Made Simple site is being turned into a Lifestyle TV programme on the Discover Channel. Content can come from many sources, nice to see that the traffic is goign the other way as well. Via Big Picture.

Tech Crunch, one of my favourite blogs for its analysis of new web businesses and applications, is offering copies of Seth Godin’s new book, The Big Moo, as part of the novel marketing scheme. You either need to comment (far too late for that) or trackback – and it looks like there’s still room for that.

Not being in the US, a contribution to P&P is required…but it;s still cheaper than buying from Amazon!

A couple of sites via Adverblog to waste a few moments at work. The first is from Snickers (and I still always say Marathon in my head), a site with a daily changing game or interesting flash peice. The second is from Virgin Atlantic Australia, a amusing little game to let you know how all your onboard problems are associated with not flying Virgin Upper Class for your business travel.

Via Adrants, Sony Ericsson are running a customer-submitted contest for mobile phone photo recreations of famous movie moments.

Hugh again challenges traditional marketing for big brands, but instead of suggesting ‘new media’ as an alterntive thinks there is no hope for such brands. In the multi-billion dollar suicide pact between clients and television and the earlier post about letting big media stay focused on what they think works why others just get on with it.

But its not going to be that simple. The clever brands already recognise the changing face of advertising; there are more and more reports about brands switching spend from TV to online. They’ll never entirely abandon TV ads, but there’s more and more integration. The fun will be in watching how many of them get it right and how many crash and burn.