Got Any Virtual Chocolate Lately?

AdNectar, for whom this isn’t the first time, and Fun140, publisher of quizzes on Twitter, just launched branded virtual goods, such as Godiva virtual chocolates or Malibu virtual rum, on Twitter or LiveJournal.

 (A previous virtual campaign of Godiva on Facebook)

Thus, if a person sends some virtual chocolates to a friend using Twitter, the friend is notified via a direct message, Twitter’s private messaging service.

By clicking on the URL in the message, a link will then direct it to the virtual chocolates and a tweet will alert the sending party when the gift is received.

“People use virtual goods to personalize how they communicate with their friends.  Branded items will make this social experience on Twitter more engaging and entertaining” explains Ashvin Kumar, co-founder of Fun140.

By allowing the offering of branded virtual goods, AdNectar diffuses the brands directly into the network of friends.  Thus, socially accepted, these goods benefit from a viral dissemination that is much more effective than displaying advertising banners.

AdNectar's clients 

3 years ago the brand fan pages, now common, might have seem to be a marginal and exotic media.

Today, given the continual increasing widespread use of virtual goods, it is more than likely that branded virtual goods are going to become one of the strongest social marketing tools, because it subscribes to the new implicating, engaging, and recreational marketing logic.

A previous campaign for Godiva chocolates in virtual form, conducted by AdNectar on Facebook before Valentine’s Day showed impressionable propagation results.