The anatomy of a great digital launch campaign

Taken from an article in the WSJ (Jan 24 , 2008. Marshall Crook & Peter Sanders), that actually about the death of Heath Ledger, this excerpt gives a good outline of the great multi-channel, long-term, viral based campaign used to launch the Dark Knight Film.

The viral campaign of "The Dark Knight" began to appear out of nowhere in May. That's when an inaugural political advertisement for Harvey Dent, aspiring Gotham City district attorney, appeared online without mentioning any movie. IBelieveinHarveyDent.com featured a photo of the candidate and was "Paid for by Friends of Harvey Dent." By following clues sprinkled on Internet message boards, fans then were led to a second site: IBelieveinHarveyDentToo.com. The page was the same, but Mr. Dent's picture was defaced with blackened eyes and a ghastly red grin. (The page has since changed, but visitors can scroll down to see a hidden message.)

The site was a fake, the candidate photos were of actor Aaron Eckhart, and the Web pages were the beginning of an elaborate attempt to stir up interest among fans. Throughout the summer and fall of 2007, the campaign served up a labyrinthine adventure set in an alternate-reality Gotham City. The drive of the campaign was the slow reveal of the Joker as played by Mr. Ledger. The actor's death puts into question the future of the Joker-centric marketing push for "The Dark Knight" and whether Warner Bros. will change tactics rather than risk a negative public response.

At the defaced Harvey Dent Web page, fans could get a code that allowed them to remove a piece of the overlying image. As more fans participated, Mr. Dent disappeared pixel by pixel, displaying the first official photo of Mr. Ledger's Joker: a grim white face appearing out of the darkness with dead eyes and an erratic, ruby smile carved into his cheeks.

With a playful but psychotic tone, the Joker character kept movie fanboys guessing for months. In late October, he requested that they participate in a nationwide scavenger hunt. Fans took photos of letter-shaped landmarks all over the country. The letters formed a message: "The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules," which then dissolved into a fresh Joker image. In November, the Joker encouraged fans to submit images of them and friends painted with white faces and red smiles. Each game resulted in a new image of the Joker or a new site with a new quest. Fans were updated on viral developments by editors of popular film news sites like www.superherohype.com and aintitcool.com, among others.

In late fall, fictional newspaper the Gotham Times launched its Web site, www.thegothamtimes.com, where fans could read up on Batman's exploits or Mr. Dent's war on corruption. Readers then discovered a second newspaper, the HaHaHa Times, at www.thehahahatimes.com, which was a frightening version of the original paper with edits made by the Joker himself.

In December, the campaign subsided when "The Dark Knight" prologue was screened before IMAX showings of "I Am Legend" and the first full-length trailer for "The Dark Knight" made its debut. Both featured footage unveiling Mr. Ledger's performance.

Such campaigns aren't new, of course. "The Blair Witch Project" in 1999 established that young movie fans could be enticed by online games that hold their interest for months before a film's release. Online campaigns have now become a standard feature of the marketing for certain films, especially comic-book fare like Batman.

Mr. Ledger isn't featured just in the online campaign. The movie's current poster includes a ghostly and haunting image of Mr. Ledger in his Joker getup, with the tag line "Why So Serious?" scrawled in red. In recent interviews, Mr. Ledger said the Joker was the most-fun role he had ever undertaken but was taxing physically and emotionally.

The movie's viral campaign is the work of 42 Entertainment, a Pasadena, Calif., independent producer of alternate-reality multimedia environments. The goal was to create a multiplatform story bridging the 2005 film -- which cost $150 million to produce and sold about $370 million of tickets world-wide -- and its sequel.

Untimely deaths have interrupted movie marketing before -- from James Dean's 1955 death before "Giant" was released, to the accidental shooting of Brandon Lee on the set of "The Crow," to the murder of director/actress Adrienne Shelley in the run-up to "Waitress" last year.

Web movie campaigns often rely on movie fan sites to whip up and maintain interest in the online initiatives. "We usually help kick off campaigns by spreading the word, and fans take it from there," said Mirko Parlevliet of Coming Soon Media LP, which operates sites like comingsoon.net and superherohype.com.

Mr. Parlevliet said the viral campaign for "The Dark Knight" "was very detailed and got a great response from the fans," adding that fans were rewarded for participating by gaining access to trailers, posters and photos. Still, he says, "I personally don't think these games reach an audience beyond the Internet-savvy fans. ... Also, [the studios] should concentrate more on a world-wide audience instead of just the U.S. fans."

Thumbs Race as Japan’s Best Sellers Go Cellular

TOKYO — Until recently, cellphone novels — composed on phone keypads by young women wielding dexterous thumbs and read by fans on their tiny screens — had been dismissed in Japan as a subgenre unworthy of the country that gave the world its first novel, “The Tale of Genji,” a millennium ago. Then last month, the year-end best-seller tally showed that cellphone novels, republished in book form, have not only infiltrated the mainstream but have come to dominate it.

Of last year’s 10 best-selling novels, five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels. What is more, the top three spots were occupied by first-time cellphone novelists, touching off debates in the news media and blogosphere.

“Will cellphone novels kill ‘the author’?” a famous literary journal, Bungaku-kai, asked on the cover of its January issue. Fans praised the novels as a new literary genre created and consumed by a generation whose reading habits had consisted mostly of manga, or comic books. Critics said the dominance of cellphone novels, with their poor literary quality, would hasten the decline of Japanese literature.

Whatever their literary talents, cellphone novelists are racking up the kind of sales that most more experienced, traditional novelists can only dream of.

One such star, a 21-year-old woman named Rin, wrote “If You” over a six-month stretch during her senior year in high school. While commuting to her part-time job or whenever she found a free moment, she tapped out passages on her cellphone and uploaded them on a popular Web site for would-be authors.

After cellphone readers voted her novel No. 1 in one ranking, her story of the tragic love between two childhood friends was turned into a 142-page hardcover book last year. It sold 400,000 copies and became the No. 5 best-selling novel of 2007, according to a closely watched list by Tohan, a major book distributor.

“My mother didn’t even know that I was writing a novel,” said Rin, who, like many cellphone novelists, goes by only one name. “So at first when I told her, well, I’m coming out with a novel, she was like, what? She didn’t believe it until it came out and appeared in bookstores.”

The cellphone novel was born in 2000 after a home-page-making Web site, Maho no i-rando, realized that many users were writing novels on their blogs; it tinkered with its software to allow users to upload works in progress and readers to comment, creating the serialized cellphone novel. But the number of users uploading novels began booming only two to three years ago, and the number of novels listed on the site reached one million last month, according to Maho no i-rando.

The boom appeared to have been fueled by a development having nothing to do with culture or novels but by cellphone companies’ decision to offer unlimited transmission of packet data, like text-messaging, as part of flat monthly rates. The largest provider, Docomo, began offering this service in mid-2004.

“Their cellphone bills were easily reaching $1,000, so many people experienced what they called ‘packet death,’ and you wouldn’t hear from them for a while,” said Shigeru Matsushima, an editor who oversees the book uploading site at Starts Publishing, a leader in republishing cellphone novels.

The affordability of cellphones coincided with the coming of age of a generation of Japanese for whom cellphones, more than personal computers, had been an integral part of their lives since junior high school. So they read the novels on their cellphones, even though the same Web sites were also accessible by computer. They punched out text messages with their thumbs with blinding speed, and used expressions and emoticons, like smilies and musical notes, whose nuances were lost on anyone over the age of 25.

“It’s not that they had a desire to write and that the cellphone happened to be there,” said Chiaki Ishihara, an expert in Japanese literature at Waseda University who has studied cellphone novels. “Instead, in the course of exchanging e-mail, this tool called the cellphone instilled in them a desire to write.”

Indeed, many cellphone novelists had never written fiction before, and many of their readers had never read novels before, according to publishers.

The writers are not paid for their work online, no many how many millions of times it is viewed. The payoff, if any, comes when the novels are reproduced and sold as traditional books. Readers have free access to the Web sites that carry the novels, or pay at most $1 to $2 a month, but the sites make most of their money from advertising.

Critics say the novels owe a lot to a genre devoured by the young: comic books. In cellphone novels, characters tend to be undeveloped and descriptions thin, while paragraphs are often fragments and consist of dialogue.

“Traditionally, Japanese would depict a scene emotionally, like ‘The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country,’ ” Mika Naito, a novelist, said, referring to the famous opening sentence of Yasunari Kawabata’s “Snow Country.”

“In cellphone novels, you don’t need that,” said Ms. Naito, 36, who recently began writing cellphone novels at the urging of her publisher. “If you limit it to a certain place, readers won’t be able to feel a sense of familiarity.”

Written in the first person, many cellphone novels read like diaries. Almost all the authors are young women delving into affairs of the heart, spiritual descendants, perhaps, of Shikibu Murasaki, the 11th-century royal lady-in-waiting who wrote “The Tale of Genji.”

“Love Sky,” a debut novel by a young woman named Mika, was read by 20 million people on cellphones or on computers, according to Maho no i-rando, where it was first uploaded. A tear-jerker featuring adolescent sex, rape, pregnancy and a fatal disease — the genre’s sine qua non — the novel nevertheless captured the young generation’s attitude, its verbal tics and the cellphone’s omnipresence. Republished in book form, it became the No. 1 selling novel last year and was made into a movie.

Given the cellphone novels’ domination of the mainstream, critics no longer dismiss them, though some say they should be classified with comic books or popular music.

Rin said ordinary novels left members of her generation cold.

“They don’t read works by professional writers because their sentences are too difficult to understand, their expressions are intentionally wordy, and the stories are not familiar to them,” she said. “On other hand, I understand how older Japanese don’t want to recognize these as novels. The paragraphs and the sentences are too simple, the stories are too predictable. But I’d like cellphone novels to be recognized as a genre.”

As the genre’s popularity leads more people to write cellphone novels, though, an existential question has arisen: can a work be called a cellphone novel if it is not composed on a cellphone, but on a computer or, inconceivably, in longhand?

“When a work is written on a computer, the nuance of the number of lines is different, and the rhythm is different from writing on a cellphone,” said Keiko Kanematsu, an editor at Goma Books, a publisher of cellphone novels. “Some hard-core fans wouldn’t consider that a cellphone novel.”

Still, others say the genre is not defined by the writing tool.

Ms. Naito, the novelist, says she writes on a computer and sends the text to her phone, with which she rearranges her work. Unlike the first-time cellphone novelists in their teens or early 20s, she says she is more comfortable writing on a computer.

But at least one member of the cellphone generation has made the switch to computers. A year ago, one of Starts Publishing’s young stars, Chaco, gave up her phone even though she could compose much faster with it by tapping with her thumb.

“Because of writing on the cellphone, her nail had cut into the flesh and became bloodied,” said Mr. Matsushima of Starts.

“Since she’s switched to a computer,” he added, “her vocabulary’s gotten richer and her sentences have also grown longer.”

Related links:

Book Uploading Site of Starts Publishing

Orion, a Cell Phone Novel Site for Goma Books

The Novel, "If You"

Mika’s blog

Growing a New Niche in Retail Banking

http://www.strategy-business.com/li/leadingideas/li00058
by Alan Gemes, Fabienne Konik, and Caroline Moss

1/15/08
How some top performers are adapting to target the lucrative mass affluent market.

The growing number of well-to-do consumers has already captured the attention of the retail market, and now banks are getting on board: In early September 2007, HSBC announced the roll out of HSBC Premier — offering borderless banking and preferential services — which they describe as “the first truly global personal banking service for the world’s…mass affluent,” a demographic group that is variously defined as possessing between US$100,000 and $1 million in liquid assets and that has demonstrated a taste for luxury and exclusivity. Another early entrant to the field, Citibank, describes Citigold, which offers exclusive services and rewards to mass affluent customers, as a “premium banking relationship…designed to give you — and your finances — the attention you deserve.”

Mass affluent customers are mobile, sophisticated, and extremely busy. As such, they demand financial advisors with specialized knowledge, they want the ability to schedule meetings with these advisors flexibly and easily, and they put a premium on privacy. As one of several key findings of a Booz Allen Hamilton study of retail banking best practices shows, top-performing banks around the world are tailoring their services across all channels to adapt to the preferences of this small but increasingly influential segment.

For banks seeking to enhance their performance, developing offerings to attract mass affluent customers may be the key to raising their profile and reducing their cost-to-income ratios. There is still room for them to jump in, but each institution must weigh the economics of such a move and determine whether there is demand for such services in its market. For example, the higher assets and average balances of this segment justify the costs of introducing new, more expensive offerings for banks like HSBC. One study has noted that mass affluent customers are roughly 30 times more profitable than those of the mass market, and the global mass affluent segment is expected to grow by 35 percent between 2005 and 2010. Thus, navigating this path successfully, through improving traditional channels such as branches and call centers and expanding new services such as online and mobile sales forces, can be quite lucrative.

Revamp the Mainstays
Although mass affluent customers are increasingly interested in alternate channels like the Web, banks can still target them by enhancing their experience in the branch, and on the phone.

Branches. The mass affluent should be offered a differentiated service that evokes a sense of exclusivity. The best retail bank branches provide a hotel lobby–style appearance, concierge, and interactive information. Their staffs have immediate access to customer and product information, and meetings with specialists can be booked in advance.

Some banks achieve this sense of exclusivity by creating a separate floor for the mass affluent to do their banking. At Citibank branches in Asia, for example, Citigold members have access to a separate area with plush sofas, no lines, and the opportunity to sit down and privately discuss their service needs with an advisor. Although they may not meet with a dedicated relationship manager, they will meet with a special officer who deals only with mass affluent customers and who has access to their personal information. These advisors will be better trained, and have a broader range of skills across products.

Call Centers. Even as call centers are becoming a less popular purchasing channel, banks should still consider a segmented offering for mass affluent customers. Once in place, though, the centers need to minimize hand-offs and ensure fast connections to knowledgeable advisors.

Banks should offer dedicated phone numbers for mass affluent customers; they may call in to the same call center as all other customers (though they won’t know it), but their calls will be immediately routed to people who are specially trained to meet their needs. Some banks have made progress in this area: Citibank’s Citigold offers its customers an exclusive 24/7 toll-free customer service number; Credit Suisse assigns mass affluent customers an advisor whom they can call directly; the Bank of China, as well as other Chinese banks, offer 24-hour access to assistance by phone and guarantee an instant connection. In fact, banks in Hong Kong and China are setting the standard for customer service in call centers.

Expand New Channels
For most retail banking customers, the traditional branch remains the preferred purchasing venue, but that is changing. The mass affluent have demonstrated a preference for alternatives such as online services and mobile sales forces.

Online. Mass affluent customers are 30 percent more likely to prefer the online channel. Increasingly, they are demanding the opportunity to purchase products and transact online, and this trend is likely to accelerate as broadband connections reach more and more homes worldwide.

Banks should develop Web sites targeted solely at the mass affluent in order to fully exploit this segment. These sites should begin with a landing page reserved for the mass affluent customers and should offer products and services tailored to their needs. For example, while browsing the Web site of Spanish bank Bankinter, mass affluent customers see messages that are targeted to their individual behavior, recommending products, such as trusts and access to equities, and tax planning, that they can then easily order or access. On some Chinese banks’ sites, mass affluent customers will see market projections that can help them make investment decisions.

South Korean banks are leading the field in online banking. Woori Bank, for example, is a top performer with a model Web site dedicated to its mass affluent clients. Their site, called “Two Chairs” — a reference to the one-on-one spirit of the service — includes links to articles with expert opinions, customer news bulletins adapted to the mass affluent’s information needs, and an online lifestyle magazine tailored to their interests. The site also provides assistance for Korean expatriates, information about finance and banking for customers looking to study or move abroad, and an online reservation system for Woori-sponsored VIP lounges at Incheon International Airport. In addition, clients will find an advisory center providing financial advice on a variety of issues and a “eFinancial Product Mall” that is differentiated from that of the bank’s regular site.

Mobile Sales Force. The mobile sales force brings salespeople directly to the customer — in his or her office, home, or in the location of his or her choice. The idea is to make the experience personal and as convenient as possible.

Very few banks offer mobile sales forces today. Yet mobile sales forces could be an integral part of a bank’s mass affluent service and could address the special requirements of this group: The sales forces should have sophisticated appointment systems and their staff should be able to complete requests swiftly. In other words, connectivity and empowerment are key to success in this channel. In addition, both specialist and generalist sales advisors should be available, there should be flexibility on the timing and location of meetings, and customers should be reminded of their appointments by text message. Follow-up is also crucial: Banks should send out meeting summaries, and, when possible, customers should be able to see the same advisor on more than one occasion.

In Asia, a number of banks, conscious of mass affluent customers’ preferences, invested in creating a special area to serve them in the branch. The customers appreciated the banks’ efforts; however, they soon started to send their drivers in their stead. The banks ramped up their mobile sales forces in response, to ensure face-to-face meetings with the client. In Hong Kong, mobile sales advisors are available to meet anywhere, at short notice. Mobile sales forces have also taken off in Latin America, in particular in Brazil, where oppressive traffic makes it less likely that time-poor customers will come to the branch: Banks need to go out and see them.

Opportunity for Growth
By providing segmented services across all channels, banks can set themselves apart from the pack, attracting mass affluent customers and ensuring their loyalty.

Citibank’s Citigold, for example, has a branding associated with it, offering segmented services across all channels — in branches, call centers, and online. In addition to the benefits described above, Citigold customers are offered priority processing, special savings and rewards, and access to financial advisors from Smith Barney to guide their investing and manage their portfolios.

The recent relaunch of HSBC Premier as a global banking offering is focused on the mass affluent’s mobility, and seeks to provide seamless cross-border banking. Among its offerings are a globally accessible number for emergency assistance, access to a dedicated relationship manager, access to banking services and lounge facilities (Premier centers) in 35 countries and territories, and the ability to view and manage — through a single Web site — all HSBC accounts held globally. HSBC has developed a Global Training Academy to get 5,000 Premier relationship managers on the ground, along with 3,000 support staff, all specially trained to serve the mass affluent.

These and other top-performing banks are developing and adapting their distribution channels to meet the needs of increasingly demanding customers: Their branches are attractive and well-designed, their Web sites are highly specialized and secure, their call centers offer quick solutions to customers’ problems, and their mobile sales forces enhance convenience and enable face-to-face interaction. As their numbers continue to grow, the mass affluent will offer banks that carefully and intelligently enter this market substantial opportunity to raise their game.

Video game industry record labels

http://www.psfk.com/2008/01/new-music-based-games-driving-digital-downloads.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1934632220080120

Auto Dealers To Drive New Mobile Marketing Efforts

Some interesting ideas on how the auto industry is starting to use mobile to enhance other forms of communication

It's interesting how so many new mobile marketing platforms are either market specific, or making market-specific pitches.

Real Estate's been working mobile for a while - and increasingly, so are auto dealers.

Cincinnati-based mobile platform provider OneCommand, for instance, has launched a new mobile marketing platform custom-tailored to auto dealers.

According to OneCommand, the new solution enables real-time, two-way communication between a dealership and consumers in several ways:

• Service Reminders: A dealership can automatically send text messages to their customers to remind them of their upcoming service appointment. If the time is no longer convenient, the customer can request via a simple text message to reschedule, triggering the system to automatically return a message asking when the next most convenient time may be. The customer texts back a time, the dealership is notified and as a result the appointment is rescheduled.

• On-the-Lot Marketing: Customers visiting a dealer’s lot after hours can text for more information regarding a vehicle or the dealership itself and have the system automatically respond with a text description, color “brochure” of the vehicle or even video. The system also offers the customer the ability to request this same information be sent to them in email, thereby capturing and reporting to the dealership both the customers’ phone number and email address for follow up.

• Newspaper ads: Dealers can enrich their newspaper ad campaigns by including wording in their ads telling the reader to text for more information and the same process is then followed as above.

• Customer Satisfaction Surveys: After vehicle purchase or service a text message can be sent asking if the customer is satisfied and to please text “Yes” or “No”. If the customer responds “No” the system responds and asks the customer if they would like to speak to a manager. If the customer responds with a “Yes”, the system automatically connects a phone call between the customer and the dealership to quickly head off any customer service issues.

Read more about it, here.

Taking residence in virtual worlds

Good overview from Mahesh Sharma in December 04, 2007's issue of The Australian IT section about some current, Australian business activity in the 2.0/virtual world environments

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,22862449-24169,00.html

Interactive story telling

Good article from Colleen Jones, via imediaconnection about how to ally storytelling approaches to the digital space.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/18041.asp

Crunchies winners 2007

A great evening was had by all tonight as some of the leading startups gathered for the first annual Crunchies, a joint production between Read/Write Web, VentureBeat, GigaOm and TechCrunch.

The ceremony went (mostly) smoothly with a couple of surprises amongst the results. For a full list of nominees, visit the Crunchies 2007 portal here.

Best Overall: Facebook

Facebook revolutionized the idea of what social networking could be.

Best technology innovation / achievement: Earthmine

Earthmine picks up where Google Earth leaves off, bringing deep semantic data to 3D panoramas of the real world. Earthmine’s system can keep track of the objects found in the real world and attribute information to each of them, such as latitude, longitude, elevation, and other attributes.

Best Clean Tech Startup: Tesla Motors

Tesla’s green sports car has captured the imagination of a public who had come to expect electric cars to be dull are boring. Due to be released this year, the company has pre-orders from some of the biggest names in Entertainment and Technology.

Best video startup: Hulu

Hulu put television online. Their broadcasting system was modeled on the success of social video sites and drawn the praise of its previous critics.

Best user-generated content site: Digg

Digg’s simple voting system defined the emerging social media revolution. Getting “dugg” quickly became a badge of honor and established a coveted place in the geek lexicon.

Best mobile start-up: Twitter

Twitter, the new addictive microblogging platform. It wasn’t until after the South by Southwest conference that people realized the value of the incredibly simple microblogging platform.

Best International startup: Netvibes
Based in London, Tariq Karim and Freddy Mini’s Netvibes has made waves in the U.S. as a top personalized web portal.

Best consumer startup: Meebo
Meebo made instant messaging ubiquitous by bringing it online. They then developed it into a platform where anyone could add chat to their applications.

Best enterprise startup: Zoho

Zoho’s comprehensive online suite of 14 business applications ranging from document editing to CRM continues to lead the way in the move away from desktop computing to working in the cloud.

Best design: SmugMug

SmugMug is professional photo site. SmugMug’s attention to detail and design can command as much as $150 per year from their users.

Best new gadget/ device: Apple iPhone. See the Apple acceptance speech here.

Best business model: Zazzle

Looking for a Star Wars hat or memorable mug? Zazzle is an on-demand factory of consumer goods for top brands. It also lets consumers become producers by uploading their own images onto that T-shirt, mug, or mousepad. . Consumers can also receive a commission on products that they sell and design themselves

Best bootstrapped startup: Techmeme.
Founded and developed solely by Gabe Rivera, Techmeme serves as the front page of the tech blogosphere. The site’s advanced algorithms identify the day’s top stories by making sense of conversations across the web’s best blogs.

Best Startup Founder: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

Does this really need any explanation? At 23 Mark has built one of the world’s leading online destinations that has recently been valued at $15 billion. A remarkable achievement for anyone, let alone someone at the still relatively young 23. A well deserved award.

Best Startup CEO: Toni Schneider (Automattic)

Schnieder has lead the company from its roots as a open source alternative to Movable Type into a multi-million dollar enterprise that saves the world from blog spam and offers a free hosted blogging solution that competes with Google’s Blogger.

Best new startup: iMedix

iMedix combines search and social networking to change the way people find health information online. Users are encouraged to help each other by sharing health experiences and links from around the web.

Most likely to succeed: Automattic (WordPress)

The open source blogging platform that powers the long tale and turned into a multi-million dollar spam fighting and hosted blogging service.

Best use of viral marketing: StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon’s service lets users bookmark and discover new sites they love. With only a $1.5 million investment in 2005, StumbleUpon gew to over 4 million Stumblers and was bought by eBay in 2007 for $75 million

Best time sink site: Kongregate

CEO Jim Greer describes Kongregate as XBox live for casual games. This site hosts some of the webs most addictive casual games. Remember Desktop Tower Defense? Moreover, the games are not only played by users, but also created by them in exchange for a share of advertising revenue and other rewards.

Most likely to make the world a better place: DonorsChose

DonorsChoose.org is dedicated to connecting classrooms in need with individuals who want to help.

Ad within an ad within an ad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbNyFRPZM_8

Nice concept and i imagine one hell of the struggle to get these giants cooperating

Mobile - 'Meet The Spartans' with Carmen Electra

While we've all seen this type of thing done before, this campaign using personalised video messaging really stands of with it's simplicity, great execution and nice mobile tie-in (US numbers only at this stage).

Subject choice and premise for the video also is also spot on.

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From branding unbound: 20th Century Fox Selects Celtra´s Mobile Marketing Platform for New Movie Promotional Campaign

Celtra's on-demand platform known as Fooch Campaign Manager (FCM) delivers personalized and video synchronized phone calls as part of an interactive campaign for "Meet the Spartans," starring Carmen Electra ( http://www.carmenhasacrushonyou.com/ ). Celtra offers an on-demand service for message-based mobile marketing. The Fooch Campaign Manager (FCM) platform provides Voice, SMS and WAP push connectivity through a powerful on-demand application for campaign management.

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Carmen Electra has a crush on you. And you. And you.

In an innovative new campaign from 20th Century Fox, the studio is teaming with Boston-based Celtra to bring personalizable, video synchronized promotional phone calls to mobile phones.

It all starts at Carmenhasacrushonyou.com, which features a viral video starring Carmen Electra, the star of the upcoming movie "Meet The Spartans."

Electra becomes side-tracked with talk about a new love interest during a faux interview where she originally intends to plug the film. Users have the ability to personalize Carmen's story, by changing the subject of her love interest to someone they know. Users can then enter the phone numbers of recipients they designate and thereby send the video interview URL link to their friends.

Carmen's calling act in front of the camera surprises viewers in the much the same way as the recent Peyton Manning "Pep Talk" and "Dexter" personalizable videos and the 30 Rock promotional calls. In addition, they receive a personalized call invitation to see the movie.