Aiming to connect advertisers with local sports teams, Sport Driven has created a platform where sport clubs, agencies and individual athletes can list commercial opportunities and find financial backing.

For GBP 30 per year, teams and athletes can create a profile and list the individual sponsorship options they’re offering, like ‘match day’, ‘back of shirt’ or ‘calendar’, along with basic terms like price and duration. A premium membership of GBP 99 a year gives access to a few more bells and whistles, such as uploading images and maintaining a larger contact database. Advertisers can search the database to find local or national opportunities that best align with their budgets and marketing plans.

Launched earlier this month, the British startup will have to sign up a significant number of teams and athletes before it becomes a one-stop-shop for advertisers and sponsors. If it does, it could be an indispensable tool for an industry that's constantly exchanging visibility for financial backing. One to bring to your local market?

Website: www.sportdriven.co.uk
Contact: www.sportdriven.co.uk/support.php

Where the Amazing Food Wine Company, which we covered a few years ago, created its wines for pairing with commonly enjoyed contemporary American foods—pizza, pasta, etc—Madeinmilan Wines has taken the opposite approach, focusing instead on a historical meal. The Italian label includes three wines from northeast Italy: Brutus (Sangiovese di Romagna), Paparazzi (Lambrusco Grasparossa) and Romeo (Cagnina di Romagna), and for Brutus, it recently launched a campaign that includes pairing with a five-course ancient Roman meal. Olive caviar, sweet ham, Imperial Chicken, herbed cheese and honey dates make up the specially crafted menu for the Roman banquet Madeinmilan suggests, with complete recipes available for download from its site.

With so many competitors in the wine market already, focusing on ancient pairings is an innovative marketing angle that may well be attractive to consumers seeking new insperiences and maybe some status skills to boot. Which just goes to show, of course, that it's a rare product indeed that can't be upgraded, reconceived or repositioned in some novel way to make it new all over again in consumers' eyes. If that can be done for wine—surely one of the oldest products in the world—just imagine the possibilities for your product or brand! ;-)

Website: www.madeinmilanwine.com
Contact: info@madeinmilanwine.com

Hotels are an ideal setting for many tryvertising campaigns, approximating as they do consumers' domestic milieu. Much the way Starwood recently began giving its guests a free taste of Zinio's "digital newsstand," so Omni Hotels now offers patrons a free camcorder for the weekend.

Through the Omni Flips for Summer campaign, which runs through Sept. 6, families staying at any of the chain's hotels and resorts in North America can borrow a pocket-sized video camcorder for free and use it to record their most memorable moments. The camcorder provided is the new Flip Ultra video camcorder, launched this spring by Pure Digital, and it's available to guests who purchase any "Omni Flips for Summer" weekend package. Along with the simple-to-use camcorders, families can also start their holiday with a complimentary breakfast for four featuring “Flip-jacks” on their first day. A “Summer Fun Counselor” will also be on hand with advice on local attractions. When their weekend filming is complete, guests can upload their video memories to their own laptop or use the Omni Hotels Business Center at no charge to transfer the footage to a thumb drive to take home. Guests are also encouraged to upload a three-minute video to Omni’s Local Scoop social networking website as part of the Omni Flips for Summer Video Contest, the winner of which—announced in September—will get a free trip for four to the Omni Bedford Springs Resort in Pennsylvania.

There's no substitute for trying before you buy, and what better time to let consumers try a camcorder than when they'd most likely use it in real life, such as on vacation? Take note, purveyors of holiday-minded goods! (Related: Hotel offers each guest a favourite book, on Kindle — Free car for the weekend, no strings attached — Hotel as retail space.)

Website: www.omnihotels.com/Home/SpecialsAndPackages/SpecialOffers/OmniFlips.aspx
Contact: www.omnihotels.com/ContactUs.aspx

Spotted by: HotelChatter via Raymond Kollau

Creative agencies seem to have embraced corporate generosity with open arms, if a few recent initiatives are anything to go by. Much the way Bushfire Housing and SmallCanBeBig were donated by the Sputnik Agency and the Boathouse Group, respectively, so a new, guerrilla ad campaign for the Salvation Army was donated by an agency with the help of more than 50 local businesses.

Known as the "This Ad Cost Nothing" campaign, the three-week initiative was designed primarily to raise awareness for the Salvation Army's Northern New England division. It was conceived and created in Portland, Maine, by local agency VIA Group, which turned to area businesses for help carrying it out. Part of the campaign included broadcast time and print ad space donated by traditional media; the majority, however, employed less conventional tactics. Pizza boxes and coffee sleeves were transformed into ad space for displaying the Salvation Army's logo and URL, for example, as were bathroom mirrors at local restaurants—with the help of a little grease paint. VIA employees and willing friends parked their intentionally dusty cars in downtown Portland, with the logo and slogans written on their back windshields, while dozens of shops sported the logo on their own windows as well. Painted rocks, tarps and tennis court floors were also among the more than 5,000 "creative units" included in the campaign.

Besides getting the word out about the Salvation Army and no doubt updating its image, the "This Ad Cost Nothing" campaign is also yet another nice example of the types of efforts increasingly being expected of companies by Generation G. As the saying goes, 'tis better to give than to receive—and that's never been more true than it is today! ;-)

Website: www.salvationarmydonate.org
Contact: Craig_Evans@use.salvationarmy.org

Spotted by: Cecilia Biemann

They say the best things in life are free, and McDonald's appears to be taking that maxim to heart. No sooner did we post our story about the free car charging available at the new McDonald's restaurant in North Carolina than we saw the chain launch yet another free love initiative: Free Mocha Mondays.

As part of a campaign to promote its new McCafé line, McDonald's is now offering US consumers the chance to sample a free Hot Mocha or Iced Mocha at any participating McDonald's restaurant. The offer is available on any Monday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Aug. 3, and the complimentary drinks come in special, promotional sizes: 7 oz. for the iced version, or 8 oz. for the hot variety. (Normally, a small McDonald's McCafé beverage is 12 oz.) McCafé espresso-based drinks are made with Arabica coffee beans—harvested by hand in Central America, South America and Indonesia—along with real milk, rich chocolate syrup and fresh whipped cream. All are fully customizable, the company says. McDonald's anticipates that it will likely give away some 10 million samples during its Free Mocha Mondays campaign, making it "one of the largest sampling initiatives we've taken on as a company," said Neil Golden, chief marketing officer for McDonald's USA.

Whether it's coffee, ice cream or charged batteries, there's nothing like letting consumers try before they buy, and it's almost impossible to go wrong with free love. (Related: Free Obama-themed coffee love for UK consumers — Free Starbucks ice cream for Facebook users.)

Website: www.mcdonalds.com/mccafe
Contact: www.mcdonalds.com/contact/contact_us.html