Just Say No to Gnomes

If you feel like adding another New Year’s resolution, here’s one: If you set out to create a “mysterious” viral ad campaign for the Web, don’t settle on a concept that was talked out years ago in Internet chat rooms, has been featured as a subplot in a major motion picture, and is generally overexposed, not very clever and incredibly unmysterious.

For example: missing garden gnomes.

It’s been about seven years to the day since stories first started circulating about the so-called Gnome Liberation Front, whose members apparently abduct oppressed garden gnomes and release them into the wild.