E.P. Carrillo cigars seeks the long-elusive social media mashup business model

There's no shortage of mashups of social media tools Google Earth and Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, and Facebook.

But so far, they've been almost entirely for social causes, politics, fun, and, in the case of the swine flu, a way to track the possible global pandemic.

This just-launched mashup of Google Maps and Twitter from E.P. Carrillo Cigars seeks to add business to the mix by creating an international community of cigar smokers. The current mashup is simply a placeholder for the website, which launches in late October.

Elegantly simple, the E.P. Carrillo mashup features a real-time map shoring the origin of Tweets that mention cigars anywhere in the world.

When the site launches, it'll use the same principle to add virtual tours of the brand's cigar making process - from videos of the growers to tours of the factory. And it'll feature UGC on favorite places to enjoy a cigar.

The purpose is brand awareness, not sales, and my guess is it'll create a good deal of buzz and camaraderie among cigar aficionados.

The ad agency that created the mashup is DeVito Verdi, New York, Creative Director, Sal DeVito, Interactive Creative Director, Tyler Deangelo. Full disclosure: DeVito Verdi also is the ad agency for my client, Meijer.

Bonus Link: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome charity uses real-time Tweets "to make that point that 'Blocking Alcohol' removes the risk of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome."

Thats a great brand mashup, something you wouldn;t expect from this industry

Hi Colin.. thanks for the comment. I was part of the team that developed the site for Carrillo. Your right, creatively the cigar industry hasn't produced any breakout interactive work yet. I am hoping with this and the launch of the main Carrillo site we can bring something new into the category. Before taking on the assignment I had no background with cigars so I started reading as many cigar blogs as I could. What surprised me was how many old and young cigar smokers use almost every social media vehicle available to discuss and live cigars..

Gotta love EP Carrillo! I've always loved his cigars and this is pretty awesome for a cigar co. Good cigars + being in touch with current trends, quite a combo. I've been trying to hunt down some shops that will carry the latest EP Carrillos when they come out.