Viral marketing news and other viral happenings in the Denver Metro and Boulder area.

Boulder agency TDA Advertising & Design gets credit for an infectious campaign created for Titus Cycles. There are two parts to the campaign. One part is a contest whereby participants submit a tattoo design featuring Titus.  The winner gets the design permanently tattooed on his or her body and a $5,500 Titus bike. The other part is for those more timid among us. By voting on submitted designs, you get a chance to win a Titus t-shirt. You have to become a Facebook fan of Titus to see the submitted tattoos, but I assure you it’s worth it. There are some truly beautiful and truly ridiculous submissions.

I also love that would-be tattooees are battling it out on Titus’ Facebook wall. Well done TDA.

I definitely don’t want to get bogged down in the political tomfoolery that we can expect between now and November, but a couple of videos featuring local politicos are getting some attention. In one, Governor Bill Ritter is lambasted in a visual collage set to Johnny Cash and featuring cameos by Chewbacca the Wookie and Fred Gwynn, among many others. I couldn’t make much sense of the video, but it is an effective technique and a lot of people are watching. In the other, Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff takes aim at PAC money and the political system it supports. While I found the video a bit campy, his message clearly resonates. The video has over 1,000 views in just a few days. While the two clips come from very different ends of the political spectrum, both show the power of viral media to get a message out.

Last week, I mentioned a blog post questioning the cost versus benefit of Foursquare and other location-based services. This week, Techcrunch took issue with Foursquare in one of the best-named blog posts in recent memory: Does Foursquare Have a Douchebag Problem?. What surprises me is that they quote a comment by Colorado-based web guru Dave Taylor without crediting him. The fact that Foursquare alienated an influencer like Taylor both supports the Techcrunch story and indicates that they are revving up the engines to jump the shark.

A little less hip than tattoos and Foursquare, this story features an icon near and dear to my heart. I travel through Denver’s Union Station every day, and find its cavernous space a monument to missed opportunity. This video, beautifully executed by Harvey Productions in Denver, describes the history and planned redevelopment of Union Station and surrounds. While the video is a trailer for a longer feature that was released on Friday, nearly a thousand people have watched the clip. Considering that the phrase “historic preservation” is most closely associated with paper doilies and pillow mints, that’s quite a turnout. And it was also announced Friday that the US Department of Transportation will be kicking in $300 Million to the redevelopment. Denver’s biggest missed opportunity could become its greatest landmark.

And last-but-not-least, search engines saw a big rise in searches relating to druids and wiccans this week, with news that the  Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs has created a place of worship for a variety of pagans. I like the sentiment expressed by Academy Chaplain William Ziegler, who described the move as “another example of celebrating the freedom we enjoy as well as the freedom we, as Airmen, have pledged to defend.” But while the Academy has said that they are accommodating a pagan cadet, I suspect that it is really part of a secret weapons project.

This is a weekly update, please let me know of topics or items I may have missed.

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