Organic luxury chocolate – and ethical too

Finding a gift for a chocolate loving diabetic mother is seriously tough, but while looking for the usual sugar free diabetic chocolate (it does exist), I came across a bit of gem. I can honestly say that if a website deserves to win an award for ‘low-fi web design vs high quality product’ efforts, it’s Grenada Chocolate. Lovely packaging though.

Free games on Cimex.com

Every now and then on the web, you find a hidden gem of a site which, for whatever reason, has a modest level of visibility in the whole ‘free games’ market.

Naturally, anyone searching for ‘free games’ will be well aware of massive gaming websites likes of miniclip, so I thought I’d give a special mention to a free gaming website on www.cimex.com.

Originally launched as marketing tool or portfolio of work, Cimex’s games website is well worth a visit (and a bookmark).

Behold, dear user: Free games by www.cimex.com

Social media marketing – what works / what doesn’t

Forrester’s social media analyst Jeremiah Owyang provides a nice overview of brands which have attempted social media marketing using fan pages, widgets etc.

In a nutshell, activities – like fan pages – need to encourage communication and community building within the social network, not direct them offsite (because, presumably, it interrupts users’ conversations and communication).

One nice example is an Alicia Keys fan page, which revealed exclusive news, events etc. Fans are driven to join, debate, sign up to events, share and so on. I’m assuming this has a lot to do with why and how fans think – such as playing one-upmanship and showing other fans how much of a bigger fan you are.

Read Jermiah’s blog post on Web Strategist

Avenue A and Pluck to pull in social media content to ads

Are we about to see someone make some decent money from social media and user generated content?

Imagine it – a banner ad with (real time?) authentic user reviews and comments about the product or service. One question: will all genuine and authentic reviews and user comments be used or will only the best comments be cherry picked? As a previous post about Reevoo emphasised, consumers are pretty savvy when it comes to evaluating recommendations’ provenance.

Read more about Avenue A | Razorfish’s and Pluck’s strategy.