It seems that these days my teen age children teach me more than I teach them. As the Internet grows, and their interactivity with applications and games online grows with it, they run across marketing efforts that, typically, would be very easy for an adult to miss.

Take for example this recent find, FooPets. Now here is a brilliant social media effort. FooPets is a virtual 3d pet game where you adopt a pet and take care of it by feeding, watering, and playing with it. Inviting friends and family to your FooPets page allows

them to also feed and play with your pet, which earns you FooDollars you can spend on things you can decorate your new pets home with (like designer dog beds that would meet the needs of any real-life canine king or queen!).

Now if all of this seems pointless to you then you are not thinking outside the box.

First, although you cannot tell just by looking at the application or the web page it is housed on, FooPets is sponsored by none other than Purina. Now, instead of just putting their logo up in the corner to let people know how wonderful they are to provide this fun game, the game has a built in bag of food that, each time you feed your pet, pops out of the forefront and is revealed, and your pet then enjoys his wonderful food.

Although I’m not sure, I would imagine the name of the food changes. In this case, since my adopted dog is still just a young puppy, the bag revealed is Puppy Chow, clearly seen covering the entire application window as I excitedly wait while my virtual pet is satisfied.

Think this isn’t much of a marketing ploy? Think “brand recognition and movies”. How much is a 2 second spot in a movie if an actor is drinking coca-cola in full view of the watching audience. If your mind just “clicked” then you’re starting the get the significance.

This type of marketing is the best kind there is, and far better than the type of advertising a company like Purina has had for some time. Why? Because this advertising costs… virtually NOTHING! Yes, it cost them some money to come up with the application and get it functioning and distributed, but once the application starts to take off they won’t have to do anything. Add to this the fact that they’ve geniusly provided a MySpace application as well and now you’ve got a positive social marketing tool that will pay them in dividends in the end.

The lesson to learn from this marketing example? As with traditional marketing efforts, the best marketing nearly always comes for free (once you can plant it somewhere so that it becomes an interest that others want to share). Lastly, Purina didn’t wait for their market to come to them they took their product, created a slick application that anyone who loves animals and might also own a pet would like, and packaged the advertising as a subtle, nearly undetected bag of food that flashs before your eyes, all while you’re at the height of a happy event – feeding your pet. That combination makes for genuinely effective marketing campaigns.