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By Simon Fuller. Current thinking. Over the last few months we’ve looked at crowdsourcing initiatives, such as Benetton looking for new ad peeformers via an online campaign to BBH utilising crowdsourcing platform Talenthouse. And there are few signs of brands letting up on this, with crowdsourcing campaigns a regular fixture of the marketing landscape.
Current TV is one bunch which should know a thing or two about all this. It’s VCAM – Viewer Created Ad Message – group allows creative types to get involved in producing videos for brands, with big names like Samsung and HP getting involved by assigning briefs.

Fragrant design. Now it’s all about ‘Womanity’. Thierry Mugler today lights a website of that name aiming to crowdsource new products from the global public, with English, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese and French versions ensuring that the venture gets international spread. At Womanity, females are encouraged to express themselves – What Does Womanity Mean To [...]

By Simon Fuller. Creative fame. What happens when brands offer crowdsourcing initiatives which focus on the ad itself? Well, you get something a bit like TV channel Current’s online VCAM group.
The VCAM – or Viewer Created Ad Message – group works like this: brands post their ad assignments through the Current website, where prospective ad designers can flick through a number of work briefs. For each brief, the creatives have a month to give it their best shot before all submissions are handed to the brand, with the best four ads being aired on Current TV – that’s Sky channel 183.

Ad fest. Digital content outfit Mofilm has teamed up with five brands to develop a Make An Ad competition for the Tribeca Film Festival. Filmmakers need to grab a brief from Voltaren, Nokia, Lamisal, Nature Valley or Chex Mix, and then come up with a video. Winners get flown to New York for the Tribeca Fest red carpet premier event.
Each brand will rate films according to their originality and execution of the brief. The winning entrant for each brand will win cash and prizes up to $10,000. Second through fifth place will also be awarded cash and prizes, and runner-ups will win Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Cameras.

Doing dialogue. Crowdsourcing and online apps have been the top trending topics of the last few months, so it makes sense – kinda sorta – that someone would combine the two. The someone is UK-based consultation outfit Delib. The combo is the Dialogue App, which is billed as a ‘crowdsourcing and discussion tool designed to [...]

Short shots. Filmmaking platform Mofilm has announced the winners of the crowdsourced Barcelona Ad and the Pepsi Short Film Video competitions.
The UK’s Henry Scholfield scooped the former with a video for Samsung called Changing Lives. The jury says it loved the way the film spoofed American sitcoms and comedies ‘while retaining a style and charm all of its own’.

Metro protection. New York City has unveiled the finalists for its crowdsourced condom wrapper contest. Gotham got 600 entries and has whittled those down to just five – cue the manhole cover and top hat graphics right here. Now it’s up to New Yorkers to vote on what gets to protect the protector.
And the wrap [...]

Chocolate pig. Cadbury says it’s no picnic. But a Picnic is exactly what it is. The brand’s Aussie division has launched a website. ItsNoPicnic.tv is aimed at crowdsourcing folk to appear in an upcoming TV campaign. But wannabe stars need to get a prop. A Picnic bar, in fact. And then create their own 30-second [...]