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Toyota's Truck Summoner
This is a 30-second spot in the popular machinima style where a "World of Warcraft" player attacks a dragon using a Toyota Tacoma as his weapon.

An unbranded version of the commercial was posted on YouTube two days before it aired on TV by a Saatchi & Saatchi employee who worked on the campaign. Here's why it works: The video piggybacked on a well-established viral phenomenon in the gamer world, a WoW player named Leeroy Jenkins. Saatchi & Saatchi PR representative Erin Poole maintains that they did nothing to promote the video or seed it in gamer forums -- they just uploaded it to YouTube. I'd be more dubious if the geek legend that preceded it didn't have such strong viral legs.

Learning how to target the right niche social sites is not a difficult or time consuming process. Here are some questions to ask when you are researching social news sites and trying to find out that fits your needs:





1. Are there many comments for each news story?
2. How many votes are needed to reach the frontpage?
3. What is the frequency of new story submissions?
4. What is the date of stories on the frontpage? Are they fresh?
5. How many members are there? How active are the top users?
6. Is the topical focus of the community relevant to your niche/site?
7. Do you agree with the site’s Terms of Service?

Because security is normally so absolute, this is an opportunity few fans would dream of passing up. Besides, a film crew gets maybe 1-2 minutes of usable footage for every 12 hours of work. It's not like the visitors are going to be able to spill the beans on the whole plot. I truly wonder why studios don't try this tactic more often.

Depending on the product or service, marketers can take this same tact with its core advocates and evangelists. Instead of doing everything possible to keep the lid on future products, why not invite them in to observe? It's not a focus group, but you can still pick up some valuable insight and intelligence. Far more importantly, you practically guarantee an advocate for life for the price of a three-hour tour and some t-shirts.

But the 10-minute daily approach is even simpler. Track who stumbles stories on your blog, befriend them, and then send them a message through StumbleUpon. The last step, sending a message, is one that I’ve just started, in the hopes that I can make a more personal connection with stumblers interested in my subject matter.

The goals are simple:





1. Develop meaningful relationships
2. Build targeted traffic

StumbleUpon diverges from social news sites like Digg, where reciprocity via a power account with many connections will enable you to achieve success. StumbleUpon is obviously very different and the idea of creating a strong SU account for just for marketing purposes is absolutely archaic.

It’s much more about creating content that works well with StumbleUpon. While success on Digg can easily come with consistent reciprocation of votes and accumulative user efforts, Stumble Upon is a more democratic platform. It doesn’t matter if you have a puny StumbleUpon user profile, as long as your submitted website is appealing to a large number of other SU users.

It’s not about profiles or even experimental sampling. It’s about replicating the social media success of other websites by creating excellent content of similar or higher quality. It’s about social media evangelism or the practice of educating your audience about a relevant social website.

It’s about building a community that will readily submit and stumble articles on your site without you even asking for it. It’s about sharing articles you have with StumbleUpon friends who you know will be interested.

Copyblogger’s title cheat sheet:





1. Who Else Wants [blank]?
2. The Secret of [blank]
3. Here is a Method That is Helping [blank] to [blank]
4. Little Known Ways to [blank]
5. Get Rid of [problem] Once and For All
6. Here’s a Quick Way to [solve a problem]
7. Now You Can Have [something desirable] [great circumstance]
8. [Do something] like [world-class example]
9. Have a [or] Build a [blank] You Can Be Proud Of
10. What Everybody Ought to Know About [blank]

"Campaign for Real Beauty" initially launched with an ad during the 2006 Super Bowl featuring preteen and teenage girls with commentary stating what they don't like about themselves. The call to action was to check out the Campaign for Real Beauty website.

The website, full of information and resources for improving one's self-esteem, became a viral hit.

So what has Dove done since then to keep the momentum? It launched a non-profit foundation, the Dove Self-Esteem Fund. At this site, young women, their moms and mentors are invited to play a role in supporting and promoting a wider definition of beauty.