I’m always amazed at the amount of money that gets spent on advertising promotions. I’m not against it, I’m just kind of amazed by it. For example, Sony’s promotion of the new waterproof  Xperia acro S smartphone on the opening weekend of Skyfall in Stockholm Sweden. I can’t tell how many phones were given away in this video, but I bet everyone in the theater got one. Pretty, pricey but not  a bank breaker for Sony.

What I really like though, is the integration with the on screen component. Sony could have simply given the phones away to theater patrons, but instead they tied it into a James Bond themed event that required participation from the theater goers. Once again, not cheap, but still probably less expensive than a media buy of 30 second TV spots. What would be interesting to see is the results of how many people switched to the Sony phone over their current phone, and how much media coverage this received post event. In 2 weeks the YouTube video has had 175,000 views. Not bad advertising ROI overall.