Wisdom of the crowd

Crowdsourcing, a term coined by Wired writer Jeff Howe and explained in the video above, is without a doubt a key digital marketing trend for 2010. The New York Times suggests that small brands shouldn't shy away from tapping into the public's willingness to share ideas to help spur innovation and feedback, and cites the example of a particularly savvy (and successful) tiny brand as a case study.

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The sound of social music is now rocking the world.

The sound of the Orange Rockcorps
Innovative social music experience that allows people to create remixes of well known tracks using their voice and sounds produced by themselves and their friends.

Orange and RockCorps come together to help you to give something back to your community. Take part in Orange RockCorps this year and help transform your local area.

Orange believes in the power of people and that's why they've partnered with RockCorps to launch Orange RockCorps in the UK, making it possible for thousands of us to give something back to our local community.

Proximus Generation Movie Project

Sometimes some things take balls to post, when you're in advertising sometimes some things take balls to publish. I'd like to file some respect to Koen, Johan, Jonathan en Carl and of course all others at Famous who participated to this project as well.

So, Famous is back huh. Not only are they re-participating in award-shows (read here: dutch newspaper extract, sorry), they've recently filed something that smells to like cyber-award potential, IF. Yes, if.

The IF
Proximus Generation Movie Project is one of those projects that relies on crowdsourcing (*). It is one of those projects that needs YOU, the crowd, the audience, to sharpen the raw diamond, to accomplish the mission. Last year Doritos posted a contest asking all Doritos lovers to post their 30sec spot to Crash the SuperBowl. The producers of the winning spot would win a grand money prize and of course become famous because of the broadcasting of their spot at the SuperBowl. But crowdsourcing (*) isn't your key to success. The WIFM is often overlooked because these projects often come with a lot of maintenance and need a huge push in media. And just being a participator isn't always enough as a push to get people into posting their stuff. Also, if the project entirely depends on the participation of the crowd than the idea melts away like snow under a blistering sun. So far there hasn't been too much activity at the PGMP but that might pick up as the spot has just been launched. The WIFM here is to see yourself on tv,... and that's it. I really wonder if people will be eager to invest their time to embrace Proximus. Proximus claims to be the "official sponsor of friendship". They smartly cover their ass from launch calling it "an experiment" :)

Let's dig into how the project works, fairly simple.
The CTA: Participate and we'll broadcast you and your friends on tv, starring our commercial.
First choose a layout-frame on the timeline. Take a picture of you and your friends exactly like the frame you selected. Post your picture to the website and admire yourself on tv within a few weeks.

Common crowd give it your best spot and pinch that creativity otherwise we'll be eating some very crappy tv-stuff in april. Luckily the frames for the final vid will be rated by the visitors.

(*) Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.