Let’s face it, most people don’t have a positive opinion of traditional advertising. Many times it’s uninvited and a message they don’t want to hear.

But what if you could get people to interact with your brand, play with it?
Make them want to hear your message.

They would take away a positive impression of your product without feeling they were being advertised to.

I’d like to introduce two brands that have done just that. The first is Carlsberg beer’s ipint app for the iphone. Push a button and the screen appears to be a pint filling with beer. Every time it’s tilted—you guessed it—it disappears just like the real thing does when you drink it.

The second is not a product but a TV show—several of them. In a ground-breaking partnership, a group of designers used Showtime’s original series “Dexter”, “The L Word”, “United States of Tara”, “Californication” and “Weeds” as inspiration for the design of a beautiful Gramercy Park townhouse. Each show inspiring a different room within the house.

In the Dexter-ized dining room modern plates, glasses, chairs, a chandelier—even custom silverware—were created in the spirit of the lovable serial killer.

To showcase the promotion, pictures of the home were plastered all over the internet, including on major blogs like “if it’s hip it’s here” and featured on-air on Showtime and NBC. They even had a month long open house advertised in local papers for tours for the general public.

Expect to see more and more of these innovative marketing techniques as consumers become jaded by traditional media and advertisers continue to think of more unique ways to catch eyeballs.