I've just come across a very effective viral marketing campaign. It's creative, cleverly executed and finishes with an unusual flourish.The pomegranate mobile phone video ad shows a mobile device that does everything: as well as the normal phone functions it brews coffee, shows movies and comes with an in-built language translation service.
Sound too good to be too true? Well it is. In fact the ad is a hoax that leads to another online ad promoting the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.
There's probably a clever Canadian ad director (dressed in the ad industry's obligatory black jeans and T-shirt uniform) counting clicks to the ad and reporting to clients even Australians have viewed the ad.
Like a lot of advertising today it holds out the promise of one thing but fails to deliver. So how effective is it if it fails to do the real job of promoting Nova Scotia? I might have started out interested in next generation phones but I finished up definitely not interested in Nova Scotia.
At the end of the day, are more people interested in Nova Scotia? If not, what's the point? It is easy to be clever online but it's much harder to be effective and deliver real world results.
Am I being too precious? Should I just sit back and enjoy it? Watch the ad and tell me what you think?