Check out these cleverly-branded APIs, online video creation filled with heart-stopping stunts and oh so much more of the best stories in online marketing in this week’s Five Things You Might Have Missed!
1.) Muscle Music: Old Spice tops our list with another great viral marketing ploy. This time the men’s cosmetics giant wants viewers to get hooked on its earworm of a song “Muscles” featured in the video starring Terry Crews as a buff one-man-band. Then Old Spice wants followers to record their own version of the song in real time and post it on its Viveo channel. That ought to make some fun watching.
2.) Coffee Cup Polling: 7-Election is 7-Eleven’s first (genius) forray into API marketing. Using coffee cups marked either Romney or Obama, 7-Eleven customers can vote for the presidential candidate of their choice and developers can visit the chain’s API for non-scientific polling results. Never has which coffee cup you pick been so, well, hot.
3.) Don’t Try This at Home: To demonstrate how powerful its new line of trucks is, Volvo turned to world-record holding highliner Faith Dickey, two speeding trucks and an empty Romanian highway. The result is a nail-biting viral hit. Will the stunt make you run out and buy a Volvo? Maybe not. But you sure won’t forget it after you’ve watched it.
4.) The Brand that Cried Fire: Oh, Amazon. You’re turning into quite the master of tooting your own horn. Amazon released a statement this week saying its popular product the Kindle Fire had completely sold out in the United States. The news arrives days before the company releases Kindle Fire 2. While skeptics are raising eyebrows over the shady numbers, we’ve gotta hand it to Amazon for taking over the exciting tech hype and publicity territory once completely dominated by Apple.
5.) Read it and Blog it: And, finally, here’s a story from the “Yes, you can blog about anything” files. Fashion blogger Wendy Felton took on the five-pound monster that is Vogue’s September issue and blogged to tell the tale. She wrote about every single page and even dished about the ads! “People live-blog major events like the Oscars, and the September issue of Vogue is hugely important and influential,” Felton told the New York Daily News. “So why not give Vogue the same treatment?” Why not, indeed, Wendy! Her coverage was a hit and we say blog what ya love and the readers will come.