Stealth Marketing Web2.0 Style

I was reading a friend's blog post today and she mentioned a cool online generator called Yearbook Yourself. So being one who HAS to try these things out I hopped on over. This takes a photo of yourself that you upload and transforms you into yearbook shots from 1950 to 2000. It is very entertaining.

I thought it was just a cute online toy the first few steps - select your gender, upload a picture, and then it said "Please Select Mall". I had NO IDEA what they were referring to, so I just chose one from the list. Up came results and then suggestions of where to shop for the products they mention. Then it hit me - Stealth Marketing - GOTCHA.

This really is quite genius. Turns out Taubman Centers, a network of US shopping malls is behind all of this. You can read about this marketing campaign here.

Well, they got me and they got me good, but I sure did have fun:

Go ahead and guess the years or use the links below to cheat. Truly genius use of Social Software to market!

1. 1952, 2. 1958, 3. 1960, 4. 1962, 5. 1964, 6. 1966, 7. 1968, 8. 1970, 9. 1974, 10. 1982, 11. 1984, 12. 1990, 13. 1994, 14. 1996, 15. 1998, 16. 2000