Seen in Contagious Magazine
The equation is simple; take the famous Generation Cash (as trendwatching.com used to call it), and promise them money, an audience and the chance to be noticed by a production company in exchange for creative work and engagement and what do you get? The first ever British Viewer Created Ad Message (VCAM).
Current, the Emmy-winning independent media company run by Nobel prize winner Al Gore and business partner Joel Hyatt, and the UK’s most innovative mobile service provider, O2, repositioned themselves as hubs managing relationships between clients’ creative briefs and the people creating content.
The first project will ask contributors to create a spot for the O2 Bluebook: Nothing is Lost campaign. Bluebook is a free service that backs up and stores contacts, photos and SMS messages from your mobile. The challenge is to communicate in 60 seconds the frustration of losing all your contact details – who hasn’t experienced that pain at least once? – and what life would be like knowing that you have an automatic backup even if, like me, you’ve lost your handset 13 times.
VCAM launched in US in 2006, and has generated significant revenue for Current with Sony, L’Oreal and Toyota already signed up. 100 submissions will be sought for each brief with four or five selected to air. With 30 million viewers and an internal survey that indicates that 92% of them are keener to watch more VCAM spots than professionally produced ones, the willingness of brands to invest in this form of user-generated content is understandable. If you add the viral element - where on average a video is shared with at least 3 friends - these 30M viewers could turn out to be more like 30 million cubed.
David Ridings, UK Director of Marketing, Current commented: ‘VCAMs are the opportunity for Current to further engage its audience across all aspects of the channel, from creating short films for transmission to channel promos. We’ve witnessed some incredible talent emerging in the US with the strongest ads succeeding in distilling brands, products or services down into very pure, simple concepts – showing a clarity of vision and purpose. We are delighted we now have the chance to launch the concept in the UK – especially with such a pioneering partner as O2.’
Despite some futurologists
proclaiming the death of UGC this year, engaging an audience with
consumer created content is still one of the most effective ways to
show people that you care what they think.
www.current.com
www.thenewshub.co.uk
