Here's a cool  campaign from the market's best, Durex - a dedicated website, with all the expected social media integration, for those who want to partecipate in an artistic contest...to design the new durex box

The aims of the iniative are many: engagement, trough an explicit call to action and the social media; making the brand positioning even "younger" than it currently is; a bit of buzz and awareness on the web (the famous 15 minutes of celebrity) 

Participants and visitors as well are asked to vote, share and, potentially, win something concrete along with some recognition - in conclusion, a curious marketing mix made of social media, contests, merchandising that's sure to work...because, who wouldn't want to "see you design in bedrooms worldwide"? 

Sex & Places

The social media themselves can't be considered anymore as an unconventional communication channel, since they are basically the starting point of any respectable marketing campaign - still, is cool to see how the innovations within them are starting to be exploited, like the well recognized "places" function

In this case an HIV awareness campaign tries its best to be eyecatching with the places logo, by conveing at the same time a very direct message, sure to be caught by the new "social" generation

Jane Williams and 34 others were here

Bill Johnson and 19 others were here

Love Making profile - track your performance, social media style

The following video is a brilliant recap of what in my opinion is the best sex-themed campaign of the year - the aim was to promote AIDS awareness and the importance of condoms among the young swedish.

The clever marketing mix used is perfectly in target: social media, smartphones, QR codes, iPhone apps and obviously, condoms!

Approx 50K condoms were donated in the streets of Stockolm: behind each and every one was a QR code linked to the official app of the campaign...an iPhone app was supposed to be launched before every "bed session"...so that both the intensity, duration and noise of the intercourse would be registered and translated in graphs!

The statistic are then shared, community style, results and behaviours can be compared and tracked, and there are even merchandising opportunities (t-shirts with your performance) - there's an incredible attention to the details in every aspect of the campaign, from the updated banners among city websites, up to the 10 sec headstart to wear the condom before the start of the measuring on the iPhone, even if it's so grand in scope.

And what about the results? Just wait for the end of the video...but expect a success

Chat roulette - more than meets the eye?

"Chat Roulette" is a clever idea destined to fail due to the unpredictable use that its own audience decided to make of it - to put it bluntly: the idea of a random webcamera chat, that puts you in contacrt with complete strangers would be good - if 90% of its public weren't guys masturbating in front of the camera.

But since sex is, for good or for worse, so involved in this social media, it is also a nice platform to convey a sex-related warning regarding HIV - a girl pretends to strip, only to reveal at the last second her messagge on a "censoring" sign!

(WARNING: this is still chatroulette, so you WILL also see naked guys masturbating)