M&Ms opens social networking scavenger throughout Toronto

M&Ms candies are jumping on the social marketing bandwagon with a multi-platform scavenger hunt around Toronto, called “Find Red.”

According to the contest’s gripping back story, as written by the master of suspense himself, Stephen King — or possibly just some guy from Mars Inc.’s public relations department — the red talking M&M from the TV commercials has gone missing, and members of the public can find him by tuning into contest-specific outlets, including a Twitter feed; Stickbits, YouTube, Foursquare, Facebook pages; website and QR barcodes disseminated throughout Toronto. The grand prize of the contest is a red Smart fortwo coupe.

I guess Mars decided that M&M’s 100 per cent penetration into the key 5–12-year-old candy eating demographic wasn’t strong enough. Or maybe they were just like, “Screw it, everyone else is doing social marketing, why aren’t we?”

Either way, good luck finding the red M&M; for full contest details, visit findred.ca.