If you ask me, Orbitz has some of the best, most innovative and engaging online promotions out there.

The first Orbitz online promo I heard of was its “Fill the Plane” contest. I received my “boarding pass” from members of a street team out on Michigan Ave. in downtown Chicago. The brochure outlined how to enter the contest and win the chance to fly 300 of your closest friends to Las Vegas, Orlando or Aruba.

Steps to enter were:
1. Customize your own online plane
2. Invite two friends a day to reserve their seats
3. Each of those friends invite two more passengers a day (and on and on)
4. The first person to fill their plane with 300 people wins

So, basically, it forced you and your friends to return to the site every day and pass it along to two more people. And it was fun – you got to decorate your plane, choose what kind of aircraft, etc. And it was easy.

Unfortunately, I did not win. Clearly my friends were not very committed to winning.

More recently, I heard about another Orbitz promotion – this time in collaboration with BlackBerry.

Enter the BlackBerry Global Training Lounge and become an “agent.” Entrants return to the site everyday (Mon-Fri) to answer one question about a given destination in the world. Questions are relatively easy, multiple-choice trivia about cities throughout the world. And you can Google the question daily, ensuring that you answer correctly.

Answering the day’s question correctly not only enters you to win the trip of the week, but also to win daily prizes. The grand prize is a trip around the world. Referring additional “agents” earns you additional entries for the grand prize.

 

Why these promotions are awesome:

1. They truly have a grand prize (cmon, a trip around the world?!? a flight for 300 people?!)

2. They are extremely interactive and engaging (they force you to participate regularly and complete a simple task that’s fun)

3. They are viral (they require you to pass info along to your friends and get them to act, too)

4. They require continued participation (you return to the site daily)

5. But they don’t ask too much of you – they make it simple (in the end, emailing a friend to join a plane or answering a multiple choice question requires a minute at most)

 

Think about these types of characteristics next time you’re designing a promotion you hope will be interactive, engaging and viral.