Samsung's marketing team is inviting the public to contribute to "We All Share," a crowdsourced film that it plans to unveil in a live premiere at CES on January 9th at 2pm EST:

"Embark on a global film experience and discover what common bond brings us all together. Tell us 'what does sharing mean to you?' by tagging Twitter or Instagram pics with #weallshare and learn more at weallshare.samsung.com."

Watch the trailer below, and Samsung's other 2013 CES videos on its YouTube channel.Continue reading...

It’s fitting that the ancient mythical figure Icarus is the poster boy for marketing maven Seth Godin’s latest manifesto, The Icarus Deception.

A prodigious author of more than a dozen bestselling books translated into more than 30 languages, this aims to be more than just a book. It's Godin’s most provocative thesis to date, using the entire publishing process itself as a marketing experiment to illustrate how the connection economy works by creating and activating a community to participate by making and sharing their own "art" (he takes a broad view on art, as you'll see).

Godin’s aim is to reinvent the process of writing, making, funding, marketing and launching a "book" by sparking a public art-sharing project. On Monday he launched the first ever "Icarus Session," get-togethers organized via Meet-up and his website Squidoo, in a bid to create a worldwide event in 1,262 cities with 11,168 "Linchpins" and "Artists." 

The sessions invite strangers to share (in 2 minutes and 20 seconds) something they've made or something that inspires them. That passion could be a company or brand, a piece of art or literature, or another creative expression. Godin will pick the best to publish on YouTube.

As much about the process as the end result, Godin sold his publisher, booksellers and readers/participants on the concept by launching it as a crowdfunded project on the Kickstarter website. The creative trailblazer launched the project on June 18, 2012 and ended it July 17, 2012, having raised $287,342 (well above his goal of $40,000, which he passed within three hours of launch) from 4,242 backers.

A video that Godin co-produced with Squarespace and highlighted in a blog post, features Sasha Dichter (Acumen Fund), Sarma Melngailis (One Lucky Duck), Josh Rubin (Coolhunting), and Tina Roth Eisenberg (Swiss Miss/Tattly).Continue reading...

As three’s the charm, the Heineken Ideas Brewery is launching its third initiative: The 60+ Challenge. The previous challenges invited the public to reinvent the draught beer experience, and participate in a live innovation event.

Now the Dutch brewer, at 140 years young, is asking creatives worldwide to share observations and insights by Feb. 28th on the lives of those 60+. Participants will compete for a chance to win a share of $10,000 and have their entries, film, photos, or prose, included in a documentary.Continue reading...

Today's the day that NBC late night host Jimmy Fallon is crowdsourcing material for a Ford TV commercial for its relaunched Lincoln brand. Ideas are being gathered in real time, starting at noon ET, via tweets using the #steerthescript hashtag; more details are at steerthescript.com.

As anyone who spends two minutes on YouTube, Buzzfeed or I Can Has Cheeseburger? knows, you can't go wrong with pet videos. P&G's brand stewards at Iams were hardly surprised at the response they got when they asked consumers to select on Facebook their favorite heart-tugging true stories about pets' relationships with their owners, and then aired the winners as TV ads beginning today.

The Procter & Gamble brand, which falls under its P&G Pet Care division along with sister pet food brand Eukanuba, invited its Facebook fans, for the first time ever, to vote on five commercials based on true stories to choose the pair (one dog story, one cat story) that would air first by asking them to "like," "share" and "comment" on the stories that most moved them.

"At Iams, we trust our fans and value their opinions a great deal, so we wanted to give them an opportunity to participate in choosing our  next commercial," Iams brand general manager Ondrea Francy said in a press release about the new "Keep Love Strong" campaign.Continue reading...

The White House today was the scene of the annual pre-Thanksgiving turkey pardon, with Cobbler and Gobbler getting a reprieve — along with a shout-out to New York Times stats-cruncher Nate Silver ("once again, Nate Silver completely nailed it") and Facebook, the platform on which (in a first this year) the turkey pardon was opened to public voting. Portlandia-ready infographics (below) gave more details on each turkey's background to help voters decide. The First Family then went to Martha's Table, a food pantry in Washington, D.C., to help assemble Thanksgiving meals to be distributed to the less fortunate this holiday.Continue reading...

The Canadian Tourism Commission must be sick of selling the same old images — charming as they are — of the cobblestone streets of Quebec City, Toronto’s CN Tower, Montreal’s cathedrals, Vancouver’s Lookout, people playing hockey or skiing, Mounties on horseback, and random creatures (moose! geese!) in the wild.

The CTC knew there was a lot more out there to sell but they didn’t have the resources to dig them all up and sift through every last thing so they got with the times and crowdsourced their efforts. And when Canada crowdsources, it doesn’t go halfway.

The CTC’s 35 Million Directors project last summer asked all of its residents to take pictures and video of the things they love about where they live and send them in. A wealth of new material, more than 8,000 entries, poured into the CTC’s offices and now the organization has debuted its first ad in the campaign, using material from its contributors.Continue reading...

Budweiser was introduced in 1876 when company founder Adolphus Busch set out to create the United States' first truly national beer brand – brewed to be universally popular and transcend regional tastes — so it's no doubt still smarting from Bloomberg Businessweek's cover story on "The Plot to Destroy America's Beer" (sample quote: "Many people in the U.S. aren’t thrilled that a foreign company now owns Budweiser, America’s beer").

Anheuser Busch InBev is busy with another challenge. Bud's twelve American brewmasters just wrapped the Project 12 Beer contest, for which they "were challenged with coming up with a distinctive beer recipe worthy of the Budweiser name." The three winning beers, named for the zipcodes in which they were developed (Los Angeles, St. Louis and Williamsburg, Virginia), are now rolling out across the U.S. on a limited basis in a 12-bottle package.

The project, which launched in the spring, is described by AB InBev as the biggest focus group in the brand's history, "maybe even beer history," thanks to a summer-long sampling program that invited the public to vote for their favorite brew — re-engaging beer-drinkers with the brand and inspiring its brewmasters. The bigger challenge now, of course, is building on that momentum. That's why Budweiser is spinning one of the Project 12 brews into a new beer called Black Crown.Continue reading...