The Good and Not So Good Follow-Ups

First the bad news because it's short, although not so sweet. Remember the post we did about a clever Madsen Bicycles giveaway? Yeah, we lost. Oh well, guess we can have that intern stop standing at the bike rack reserving the spot all day.

Now for the good.

How about this campaign extension from the Heineken Let A Stranger Take You Home spot we posted about in June? Turns out someone noticed that over 300,000 people watched the ad on YouTube and suddenly people were belting out Biz Markie's "Just a Friend" song, which is featured in it.

Not content to simply pat themselves on their back for small-screen excellence, a follow-up "behind the scenes" video was released two months later on YouTube, which is accessable from the green promotional bar that now appears on the spot. But that's not all.

Users watching the "making" video can then send a text and receive a custom ringtone that the Biz created for the effort, playing off the lyrics of the original song.

We tried it. It was kind of botched up, but we eventually got the ring tone. Even so, it was cool to see how it all worked, and a nice illustration of how something can be extended into new areas. Our only beef is that a key lyric on the ringtone was changed to include the brand name. Guess you can't win 'em all.