“Guangzhou Supports You!” is a new crowdsourced, hyper-local online photography activity in Guangzhou, China.

George Parker is the perpetrator of adscam.typepad.com. Every week he shares his opinions on the advertising world with PSFK.

As further evidence of the increasing threat that crowdsourcing poses to advertising agencies, PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew will reward marketing duties for a $100 million-plus business to a consumer-picked player, via an online contest beginning in late November 2009.

eno is one of th

Victors & Spoils launched today, touting itself as the “world’s first creative (ad) agency built on crowdsourcing principles.”

Urban Places is a project that aims to collect a compendium of user-submitted photographs and descriptions of favourite urban spaces.

Only five days after announcing their new name for the Vegemite spin-off – ‘iSnack 2.o’, Kraft have ditched the controversial branding name.

In a fascinating illustration of crowdsourcing (and piracy) in China, Yeeyan, a collaborative translation website, has posted the prologue and first two chapters of The Lost Symbol.

Vizeum Norway are pitching for the Ikea account, and they’ve decided to use crowdsourcing to answer the brief, which requires coming up with an idea for a social media platform for the iconic brand.

Chicago-based digital strategist Len Kendall, creator of the blog Constructive Grumpiness, is currently planning The 3six5 Project- a lifestreaming effort that will span the entirety of 2010.

In an attempt to consolidate London’s multiple identities into a more unified package the Greater London Authority has opened up the ideation process to all. The official invitation hopes that contractors will help engage stakeholders in order to develop London’s narrative post-2012.
Independent agency Moving Brands is already putting social media to work with its blog, A Brand for London, and Twitter account @we_are_london. These initiatives are designed to open up commentary on subjects such as London’s design DNA, architecture, and people who live there.
[via brandnew]
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Quirky Crowdsources Product Design
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The problem with online shopping is that its, well, online. Until we have photorealistic 3D avatars of ourselves, it will always be better to try things on IRL. But the truth is, we dress for other people, and we often need outside opinions when deciding what to buy. So we shop with friends or, more often, end up returning half of our purchases. Though perhaps you have snapped a photo of an item with your cellphone and sent it to a friend. This is what Brooke Moreland and Joe Weisenthal noticed people doing, which gave them an idea: “Wouldn’t it be cool if you got a personalized review about how something looked on you “in real life”, before you made the purchase?”

Fiat Brazil has launched an online social media initiative to gather ideas from the public for a new concept car called the ‘Mio’ which will be presented at the 2010 Brazil Auto Show. The format is less design focused than say Peugot’s long running contest, Fiat is looking for ideas that make a car personal.
Several rounds of questions will be posed to the Mio community, the first being about features and design. Later, users will be asked for branding and marketing ideas while he engineers review the design submissions. Progress on the project will be posted and the community will [...]

Futurist Mark Pesce gave a fascinating speech at the Personal Democracy Forum last month. He explained how two different kinds of power structures (autopoietic, or self-generating, and hierarchical) will increasingly come into conflict because of their radically contrasting operating procedures. Using the recent battle between the church of Scientology and Wikipedia as an example, Pesce describes how hyperconnected, power-sharing, hyperintelligent (where shared knowledge increases the intelligence of all participants) groups chip away at the classic, top-down hierarchies of the state and other such power structures.
He explains:
In order to avoid catastrophe, the state – and any institution which attempts to [...]

This is an extract from the draft John Grant’s new book Co-opportunity, contracted for publication with John Wiley & Sons Limited, January 2010. This extract section 1 of the book – A Climate for Change.
After all the hype and much vaunted public concern about Climate Change, very little seems to be happening. The main reason for that (I’ve found, for instance doing qualitative research for the UK government) is that it is very much a low level concern. On the one hand if you ask people if they are concerned about climate change 70-80% say yes. But ask them what [...]