ChasNote

Ed Cotton at Influx Branding does a perfect job explaining Toshiba’s latest campaign with FM: Banners that invite notebook users to get tech questions answered, right there in the banner ads. Ed, forgive me for republishing your entire post (bold type added by me)!

“Federated Media has spent some time educating the ad industry on the power and potential of blogs and their authors.

“Recently, they’ve been developing content that goes beyond the banner and utilizes their blog network. An interesting example of this is a recent campaign for Toshiba laptops that’s been running on the FM Network, sites like Boing Boing.

“It’s a simple banner that allows you to ask a laptop question and get a reponse from experts or the community in general. The linkage to the brand’s positioning is through the notion of ‘experts’, Toshiba being the laptop experts.

“Browse around the site and you will find answers to all kinds of laptop questions and importantly, they don’t all ‘plug’ Toshiba laptops.

“It’s an interesting idea and a good example of going beyond the banner to create a branded utility.

“My only criticism of the idea is about its uniqueness. The problem for Toshiba is the web is awash with tips and advice for laptop owners or prospects, it’s a hard area to ‘own’.

“However, the idea of link ad content to expert content is a really smart one and it’s just a matter of time before someone does something amazingly creative and useful by linking the two together.”