When I saw this ‘announcement’ I really wanted to check into what was going on because it involved a brand I have been a lifelong fanatic of (Coca Cola) and one that I have recently started to really enjoy, Posterous.

While I sometimes wonder why people get so attached to brands and think it’s a little weird, I have to admit that I am almost over the top with my Coke addiction (go ahead and snicker and insert silly drug reference here). I actually refuse to drink other soda products unless there is literally no other choice. Also, I just like the logo and the sense of Americana it carries. Of course, with the amount of aspartame I have ingested drinking Diet Coke for years I will likely prove those lab rats correct but, hey, everyone has to check out of here for some reason, right?

Anyway, back to the marketing stuff. Posterous has teamed with Coke but there is a unique business spin on this one for Posterous which is a free “blog service” to consumers. You see, Coca Cola is actually paying Posterous for it being the platform for a contest they are running that will be part of the NCAA Basketball Tournament this year.

TechCrunch provides the overview

One of Posterous’ first “clients” is Coca-Cola, which is definitely a good first start. Coca-Cola is using Posterous for its NCAA “Dept of Fannovation” where people can come up with ideas to improve the experience of being a fan, and a chance to win $10,000.

Coca-Cola’s use of Posterous revolves around the “post moderation” feature. Any Posterous site can be enabled so that anyone can email post@sitename.posterous.com. The site owner can then moderate those posts, and publish them with a single click. This feature can be used to crowdsource images, video, and text from users.

I have not followed through on the idea submission process on this one so I have not seen this in action. I do see though that on the “Dept. of Fannovation “site” which is a very dark site in its theme because the actual Coke product for this is Coke Zero, there is a nice yellow Posterous tab that could do quite nicely to make the service more well known to a crowd (college hoops fans) that is young enough to understand it and get it.

So it looks like Posterous is taking the same tact as Twitter and deciding that the money to be made is in the corporate market. Keep it free for the regular folks so they can be herded for companies to pick apart and market to the ones they need. Sounds cold and analytical but marketing can be that sometimes, can’t it?