brand-e

Creative you. YouTube has teamed up with director, author and producer Hermann Vaske to launch a contest, Creative Heads, to get creatives uploading videos showcasing their work. And all for the chance to become part of a film slated to premier at the Cannes Lions.
“Are you the most creative head?” YouTube asks. “What does creativity [...]

Boxed in. Man In Box still has – perhaps – seven days left in his box. He could be there for 30 nights in total, together with £30,000. He doesn’t know where he is, but he’s been told his location is ‘meaningful’ to him. You can keep Man In Box company courtesy of live streams from two cameras, and listen to him recount all the places he has been to over the past 35 years.
And you can take a shot at guessing where the box is. Get it right and you win the cash. And Man In A Box – TV personality Tim Shaw – goes free.

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.

Social savvy. Facebook is the web property most commonly used by business in social media, with 85% of companies deploying this site as part of their marketing strategy, while 77% used Twitter, 58% went on LinkedIn and close to half used YouTube, according to a survey, The Value of Social Media Report, conducted by Econsultancy/Online [...]

Net loss? It’s time to bring you the trailer of We Live In Public, a film from Ondi Timoner. What’s to see? Well, it’s a documentary about Net entrepreneur Josh Harris and asks what happens when we start to live in a virtual world rather than in the physical one. The makers say the movie [...]

Matched messages. Twitter platform 140 Proof has teamed up with HootSuite to deliver targeted ads on the latter’s recently released Google Android and iPhone apps. 140 Proof matches advertising with people using public Twitter data.
“The release of 140 Proof on our iPhone and Android platform lets advertisers match their messages directly to their target audience [...]

By Hugh Jordan. Crowd creative. Crowdsourcing may not sound the death knell for creative agencies, but co-creation could be a catalyst for real change. ‘Adapt or die’ is the message coming from Andrew Needham, who has just launched London’s The Co-Creation Hub, a collaborative resource for brands seeking long-term, meaningful engagement with consumers.
So, what is co-creation and how does it differ from crowdsourcing?

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 [...]