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McKinsey has been busy crowdsourcing, and over the past couple of months has been calling for 60-second videos to showcase innovative social projects, says Steve Mullins. The move elicited 150 clips from 30 countries and the public has been given the opportunity to vote on them.

Red Bull is looking for help to sort out the best canimations. Canimations? “We launched a search for supremely talented animators, and asked them to show us what they could do with just their imagination and our blue and silver can,” the brand says. And now Red Bull wants the public jury to go online to Canimation Gallery, view the entries, and vote for the best.

As part of its Go Forth campaign, Levi’s has teamed up with the American Film Institute to get creators, makers and visual thinkers coming up with their ideas of a better tomorrow, writes Steve Mullins.

So, for its Show Us The Way film contest, the brand wants those kinda folk to submit their treatments for the opportunity to produce a five-minute short about ‘a tomorrow that is better than today’.

midem is calling for submissions to its Marketing Campaign Competition, an international contest rewarding the most innovative and creative use of music/artists in a marketing campaign. Each campaign will be judged on its force and creativity, the relevance of its concept, as well as its results compared to its objectives. Candidates are welcome to submit more than one project providing that each campaign ran in 2011 and includes a strong musical dimension.

Citröen has issued a shoutout to creatives. The Citröen Creative Award is a three-part contest – one for style, one for video, one for ideas. Oops sorry, it’s much more than a simple competition, ‘it’s a real adventure where all your ideas are given a specialised and engaged reception’.

Google is launching the YouTube Space Lab together with Lenovo, NASA, the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. What is it? It’s a ‘new galactic channel on YouTube that will lift off from your laptop, taking you to interesting and awesome videos from around the world… and beyond.’

Infiniti has unveiled its Digital Art Competition Gallery featuring 32 images created by artists during the luxury car brand’s Inspired Performance campaign. The artworks can be seen on both the MSN lifestyle portal and on Infiniti’s European customer website.

By Steve Mullins. Cool ideas outfit TED is asking agencies, brands, producers and individuals to submit work that expresses a clever, compelling or infectious idea for its second annual Ads Worth Spreading initiative.