Great internet campaigns make you... stop using the internet for a second.

Yesterday, a particular banner ad caught my eye. It was for an online dating site whose catchphrase was “the offline dating site” (the implication being that you might actually meet someone in person). I Googled it and the reviews said the site’s no good... And yes, I might have otherwise considered using it. Stop judging me.

So no dates for me :-(. But I started thinking about web campaigns that aim to actually get people off the computer (the nicotine gum of websites, if you will). Isn't that the idea though? Depending on the goal of your promotion, customers are going to have to take their face out of the screen at some point.

To that point, I’ve been trying for a while to figure out an excuse to write about one of my favorite concepts in social media campaigns: the alternate reality game. The most famous example is probably I Love Bees, an alternate reality game played in 2004 which was intended to hype the Halo 2 video game.

The phenomenon began when with some viral distribution of the url http://www.ilovebees.com/ (still active!). Purportedly someone’s personal webpage about beekeeping, the site bears all the signatures of amateur web design, right down to the annoying animated .gif of a cartoon bee. But upon visiting the site, it appears to be afflicted by a severely freaky-deeky virus or hack.

This is the impetus for a radio drama story, told in audio files posted to the site. The plot involves an alien artificial intelligence which is trapped inside the site. The site also gave players a set of global coordinates with no explanation of what they meant. Players discovered that the coordinates referred to the locations of pay phones, and the dates and times when the phones would ring. Players who answered the calls at the prescribed times got the opportunity to speak with story characters, and have their conversations recorded as part of the radio drama. Eventually, the game included Halo plot points and the "winners" were invited to a pre-release party for the game.

How freakin' cool. Everything old is new again, and whether or not you realize it, the coolest thing this century might actually be... pay phones? Well, no. But ironically, the most innovative social media tools of tomorrow's internet might be those which can actually get your face out of a screen in order to have a real life adventure in the "outside" world.

This is an important point to remember regarding the continued survival of movie theaters. With the success of NetFlix and the advancement of home entertainment, no one needs a theater just to see movies. But your house just isn't an adventure. Something needs to get you out.

This is part of the simple appeal behind New Think's "flash screening"promotion for Insidious. Any movie is a movie. But a one-time-only chance to go to a pre-release screening at midnight... Now, that's the adventure.

Today, we have access to everything we want, at the touch of a button, right here in the comfort of our homes. And you know what? It kinda sucks. Find a way to drag people out of their homes, and they just might thank you for it.