Consumers generally aren't too keen on answering surveys during their idle moments, much less while they're dining. That's what makes the success of Buzztime's campaign in Buffalo Wild Wings and Hooters restaurants so surprising. By integrating the surveys (about the sauces, seasonings and wings upon which consumers were chowing down) mwithin trivia games, Buzztime managed to accomplish what few restaurateurs have been able to do on their own: Glean insight while customers are on the premises, rather than after the fact. In a two-week stretch, it generated more than 80,000 …

ASICS had sponsored the ING New York City Marathon for so long, and with enough success, that it set out in 2011 to do something entirely unique. And so it was that, prior to the race and during the weeks that followed, commuters in Manhattan's Columbus Circle subway station found themselves staring at a 64-foot-long video wall, which flashed images from the city's five boroughs and then a clip of marathoner Ryan Hall running the length of it at his usual marathon pace (read: really, really fast). It wasn't uncommon to …

Not that Philadelphia fans weren't going to watch their Phillies in the 2011 playoffs without a promotional nudge, but it didn't hurt the cause when Turner Sports converted a host of bus shelters into dugouts. The idea? Put fans in the dugout alongside their baseball heroes. Equipped with mock dugout phones, the shelters featured any number of Philly legends as well as the de rigueur TBS messaging. Passengers who scanned the adjacent QR codes got a neat little surprise, too: Their phones automatically dialed up Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr., …

Getting web- and gadget-crazed boys to commit to watching a televised awards show is a challenge on part with getting them to sit still for more than three minutes at a time. To lure this sporadically attentive audience to its Hall Of Game Awards Show, which aired February 20, Cartoon Network turned to NBA and NHL arenas. There, the network set up booths and "kids zones" and gave away Hall Of Game rally towels, often with the assistance of kid-friendly mascots like the Milwaukee Bucks' Bango. It also sponsored a …

When one hears "Times Square takeover," the immediate impulse is to make sure that anti-terrorism officials aren't involved. Thus it's a credit to Nivea that its pre-New Year's Eve campaign in Times Square, centered around a kissing booth synched to three jumbo screens, resonated with so many visitors. The booth, located in Aeropostale's Times Square outpost, provided sampling opportunities aplenty and gave visitors the opportunity to ask Nivea "ambassadors" for advice. All photos were automatically uploaded to Nivea's Facebook page, with out-of-towners given the option of uploading their own.

For a show like Rizzoli & Isles, where much of the activity revolves around crime scenes, it made sense to hype its debut with a crime scene of its own. In concert with TNT, Pearl Media set up a 3D crime scene in a display along 6th Avenue in Manhattan, complete with interactive components that allowed passersby to dust for fingerprints and examine DNA tests. Those pedestrians who solved the crime could get their photo taken "with" Rizzoli & Isles, with the shot postable straight to Facebook. There was a mobile-phone …

Since its release back in the mid-1990s, more has been said and written about Pulp Fiction than about any other film from that era. This was the challenge faced by Lionsgate when it prepared to release a long-awaited Blu-ray version of the movie: How do you generate new enthusiasm - and new audience - for a film that has long since transcended cult-classic status? The answer was to partner with Break Media, which created a "Li'l Pulp Fiction" clip in which a pair of young'uns acted out an iconic scene from …

The X Factor, Fox and SYCOTV created a series of interactive pieces for the U.S. debut of The X Factor, but the most innovative piece of the campaign emerged in four mobile apps that gave fans exclusive access to content on demand, multiple backstage camera views of the show, and allowed them to vote through an image-based SMS voting application. During the show, the apps provided a companion broadcast serving up to 100 complimentary pieces of original content, including backstage photos, exclusive news scoops, insider access to the making of the …

Scion wanted to create an experience for visitors to their auto show and launched the Scion Surface Experience. It's a multi-touch campaign using a deck of eight unique collectible trading cards that interacts with the touch-based Microsoft Surface. When a card is placed on the surface, the table reveals photos, video content, regional sales info, and localized events. Flipping the cards trigger the playing of a beat, bass or vocal to a song from one of Scion’s …

Showtime launched The Franchise: A Season with the San Francisco Giants giving viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the Major League Baseball (MLB) club. A custom vending machine reacted to mobile check-ins by releasing a MLB baseball branded with show details. Visitors received a baseball for their interaction and shared it with their social graph. Check-ins to billboard organically promoted the show’s premiere, attracting more than 3,000 check-ins, 550 social, blog and news mentions and 2 million out of home impressions. The unit was shared via MLB's and Showtime's social sites with …