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When it comes to taking a new brand to market, sometimes it pays to be mysterious, like Verizon did for its launch of the Droid mobile phone in its shipping container showroom. Other times, a brand’s vehicle needs to show the epitome of brand identity, like Tillamook’s Loaf Love buses that resemble, you guessed it, a loaf of cheese. And sometimes, it’s all about the buzz, like the smart car-turned-piranha-mobiles used for Animal Planet’s “River Monsters” season premiere.

 As part of its summer tune-in strategy, TLC targeted New Yorkers on May 25 with a live stunt that featured a glass box truck filled with 7,200 gallons of water parked on a busy block of Sixth Avenue. 

When it comes to generating social media activity through events, the sweet spot lies in convincing attendees that your brand’s content and assets are witty, informative or just plain weird enough to merit a comment, tweet or wall post. That’s why smart marketers are integrating social media kiosks and “post it” incentives right into their activations and events as a matter of course. Yahoo! did it with its partner Flickr at the Olympics in January. ESPN made it extra-fun with the Snowcam promo for the Winter X Games.

Cartoon Network is refreshing its six-year-old tour by changing its platform from Get Animated to the Move-It-Movement. The new tour and website (moveitmovement.com) offers activity stations and tips for families on how to combat childhood obesity through a healthy lifestyle. The 30-city tour kicked off on May 1 in Washington D.C. and will continue to visit local baseball and soccer games, community parks and festivals until its last stop on Aug. 3 in St. Louis.

Hybrid events may be a new concept but they are already getting an upgrade as marketers mix the timeliness of one-off microsites with the stickiness of social media to form a one-stop branded engagement “platform” that’s always on, always evolving and never out of touch.