Interactive Marketing that engages the consumer…
Engaging the market, building brand awareness, and driving revenue to the business are challenges that face many marketers. Now try accomplishing all this with innovation and fresh ideas.
Recently, I’ve found some marketing efforts that have seemingly accomplished these objectives and more through unique approaches using Interactive Marketing. Interactive marketing is first and foremost a practice of engaging the audience with encouraged participation. It creates a direct communication between the brand and the market.
Last year on the hit soap opera The Young and the Restless several key characters launched (in story line) a print and online magazine called Restless Style. At the same time, production launched an “in character” corresponding website for fans (www.restlessstyle.com). The design and content of the site present Restless Style as reality. The site provides viewers content that is featured in episodes, while also serving as a way to encompass undated storyline information into the site’s theme. Restlessstyle.com allows the audience to be engaged. Because the site is constantly updated, it keeps fans coming back for more.
Another example of a TV show that offered audiences an engaging way to stay connected with the storyline is HBO’s hit show Entourage. After lead character Vincent Chase stared in the fictional movie Medellin, HBO launched a website (www.medellinthefilm.com) promoting said movie complete with a movie trailer, synopsis, photos from the set, and a cast interview. If you didn’t know any better, you might have thought Medellin made it to the box office.
Good interactive marketing, however, doesn’t just have to be an extension of reality. It merely needs to be an engaging way to promote the brand and involve the market. When the remake of the 1963 film, The Pink Panther opened, producers were able to feature European Smart Car (smart fortwo) as part of the cast playing the role of Inspector Clouseau’s police car. As an interactive promotional game, fans were invited to “Pick up the Trail” and hunt for the stolen diamonds at a site featured on www.smart.com.
Find a way to engage the market through Interactive Marketing practices and you’ll have them coming back for more…
