Visual Marketing: 99 Proven Ways for Small Businesses to Market with Images and Design

4. Celebrating Creativity with a Killer Smile: Creating a Viral Marketing Effect with an Online Game

Oscar Wilde said, “One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.” The creators of this online visual marketing promotion combined Wilde's two options, allowing people to express their creativity by becoming a masterpiece. MasterpieceYourself.com is a game where everyone wins. Simply insert your portrait into a masterpiece by a famous artist like van Gogh or Michelangelo. And publish it. You may resize it, rotate it, name your portrait, and send it to a friend by e-mail or by posting it on Facebook. More than 100,000 people have played the game.

MasterpieceYourself.com was created to promote the services of Langton Cherubino Group. They built buzz by using social networking services, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and creating a viral marketing campaign by contacting bloggers, websites, and publications. Spread by word of mouth online, soon traffic to the game doubled many times over.

Why It Works

More than half of the implementation time was spent on the interface design and navigation. “We wanted it to be fast and easy-to-use,” says designer Jim Keller. From the design standpoint, this means you have to think about how users will move around the site. You ...