PostSecret - Stamps + Chocolate

The marketing geniuses behind Altoids (just try to tell me their Curiously Strong campaign isn't effective, I dare you) have come up with a slightly viral, very interactive online campaign to promote their new Chocolate Altoids. Really, the word chocolate sold me right off, but apparently others aren't so easily swayed.

The concept is a la PostSecret. Annonymous people write short notes (up to 50 characters) that, once approved by the moderator, are added to the (chocolate) pool of other people's thoughts, shout-outs, secrets, put-downs, confessions, etc. The gimmick is that each thought becomes a white mint Altoid floating in a chocolate pool and anyone accessing the site can click on your thought and see what you wrote. You also have the option of approving your thought to be used by Altoids in the banner ads they are placing on other sites:


Therefore, anyone can be a copywriter! I bet that feels good to all you other ad students out there who paid $45,000 a year on a degree and countless hours on a portfolio only to be shot down time and again by the big ad agencies. Look! They don't even need you! They can pay joe-schmo $0 to write their ads AND get them to want to eat chocolate Altoids at the same time! Brilliant.

Good thing I want to be an art director.

Here's my special message to all of you:


If that doesn't put you in the mood for something chocolate dipped, I don't know what will.

Some Pre-Halloween Creepiness

Every Sunday, I like to go to the Post Secret blog to take a look at the new postcards that have been put up on the page. They are artistically and emotionally interesting, as well as shocking, sad and funny. If you've never been to the site it is worth a look.

Anyway, I went there today and at the end of this week's new card listings there is a postcard that I remembered from the week before that was just a brown piece of wrinkled paper with coordinates on it. Below it, the Post Secret webmaster has now posted an image he got through an email that seems to be a picture of what is at those coordinates (they must have been in the email as well). Posted above it are the coordinates and when you click on the link, it brings you to a Google Maps look up of that coordinate. It shows it to be somewhere near Germantown, Maryland. The closest things to it are farms and parkland. Frank from Post Secret said that he would post more as soon as he knew anything about the pictures.

So I don't know if he's thinking what my twisted brain is thinking, but my initial reaction was "Oh my god, someone buried a body there and sent in the coordinates as their secret!". Maybe being a criminal justice major and watching too much X-Files, CSI and Forensic Files has warped my mind and made me immediately jump to the worst possible conclusions, but did this cross anyone else's mind?

If what I'm thinking is right, we could have the new generation in creepy murderers on our hands. It would also be the most scandelous secret on that site to date. And maybe the worst part about my theory is that it wouldn't surprise me a bit if it were true. People are crazy and people do crazy things. If I've learned anything about life so far, it is not to underestimate the possible loonacy capable of the human race. I know. I've taken abnormal psychology and I ride public transportation every day, plus I've spent time in the south.