Waste Time Constructively, Win Free Soda

In the beginning, there was Ceiling Cat and his fractured English. Next came the Lolrus and his “bukkit.” Now, the strange Internet phenomenon of lolcats is moving on to soda bottles. Jones Soda, which has made a name for itself by featuring photos taken by their drinkers on their bottles, has partnered with the lion of all lolcat sites, icanhascheezburger.com, for a photo contest featuring lolcats or any lol of your choosing. Considering Jones Soda was the first (and only, we hope) company to sell Turkey & Gravy soda, their partnering with a site devoted to cats and weirdspeak seems to make sense. According to Quantcast.com, icanhascheezburger.com has a monthly U.S. audience of more than 1.5 million unique visitors and ranks among the top 5,000 sites on the Internet. While the simplicity of the lolcat has made them instantly accessible and thus tremendously popular, will anyone care that a 30-second creation will now have the chance to appear on a soda bottle? Additionally, will the photos—typically passed around through links or e-mail attachments—translate to soda bottles, or will monorail cat get lost in translation? Is I Can Has Cheezburger jumping the shark with this contest? You tell me. What marketing tie-in would you like to see?