Some new buzz in Ad biz...

I came upon some new and interesting forms of participatory advertising that I thought might be of interest. The first comes from the people that brought you the Got Milk? Campaign. This is an update of their White Gold campaign of last year aimed at the youth market. This updated version has a website milkquarious.com that launches October 5, 2009. According to Shootonline, for the current campaign, “White Gold goes beyond music videos to star in his own 20-minute online rock opera, Battle for Milkquarious…White Gold is billed as the star, writer and producer for the rock opera which chronicles his quest to save his hometown of Milkquarious from a devastating milk shortage. The villain Nasterious steals the town's milk and kidnaps White Gold's love interest, Strawberry Summers. White Gold travels across the galaxy to rescue her and return the stolen milk to the townspeople.”

The next campaign was written about in Online Media Daily. This new campaign is for Coca-Cola, which has “signed on as the first sponsor of "Sounds of Buzz," an online community launched by pop-culture blog publisher BuzzMedia offering live concert coverage from top bands, photos, video, news and show reviews.” The article reports that “Coke is partnering on the effort with BuzzMedia's music-focused blogs Buzznet, Stereogum and Absolute Punk. The SoundsofBuzz.com site, which will be up through Oct. 31, features ample Coke branding throughout. As part of the broader campaign, Coke and BuzzMedia sponsored Katy Perry's recent show at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. The full concert is now available at the Sounds of Buzz site.” Check out the Katy Perry concert – pretty cool, if you’re a fan.

Finally, there’s the buzz created around Arby’s, which was recently rated by J.D. Power and Associates as the most talked-about quick-service restaurant online among "early careerists" (those between the ages of 22-29). This was at least in part due to this summer's Wednesday Freebies promotion. The J.D. Power and Associates report was based on several hundred thousand conversations on social networking sites. This is a good example of how marketers are utilizing “engagement” as the new measure of campaign success.