ChasNote

If you’re not already a subscriber to MarketingProfs, they’re offering a free trial. This week they added a marketing case study on Lenovo at the Olympics:

“CASE STUDY: Last month in Beijing, Lenovo leveraged its Olympic sponsorship to develop global brand awareness. Unique to its approach was its use of new media, which fortified its traditional marketing and created a new level of athlete and fan interaction.”

Here’s more on the Facebook app that was part of the sponsorship.

Samsung Mobile has included a few FM sites (roadblocks on Bleacher Report, sponsorship of Watercooler’s Olympics Facebook app, and others) in their “Medal Mania” treasure hunt campaign, where registered players get email hints telling them where to find Samsung easter-egg ads at various sites across the web. Players rack up “medals” for each click and improve their odds at winning $100,000 (the grand prize) or Samsung phones, flat panel TVs and other home entertainment goodies.

I wanted to include a picture of the 300×250 easter-egg banner I found on Reuters today (I got the hint, first try!), but now I can’t find it. I’m guessing Samsung is using cookies and frequency capping to prevent players from racking up more than one medal per site. Which makes sense, but I’d love it if they allowed participants to share the easter-egg ads by embedding them in their own blogs or profile pages. Perhaps an enterprising little crook might improve his or her odds by posting the ads to “Samsung Medal Mania farms,” but in the meantime the campaign would be off to the viral races.