Director Spike Lee to Host MOFILM’s UGC Competition
MOFILM, a pioneer in creating content for global online and mobile operators, just announced that director, producer, writer and actor Spike Lee will host the MOFILM’s User-Generated Content “You to the Power of 12- U12” Competition at the Cannes Lions 2009 Advertising Festival, held June 21 to 27. The MOFILM U12 competition gives 
ordinary individuals the chance to develop video for leading brands, giving them visibility (and a crack at moving from user-generated content to professionally generated content!) in front of top brands as well as an estimated 10 million video, internet and mobile viewers worldwide. Prizes top $120,000 and a chance to be on set of Spike Lee’s next production.
The competition will begin on April 14, and the last entries will be accepted on June 8, 2009 at 8:00 am GMT. Brand winners will be announced on June 15. The top three finalists will be announced on June 25 and the grand prize winner will take the main stage at Cannes on June 26. The U12 competition is open to everyone.
“Giving aspiring creative individuals this type of opportunity to tell their story truly resonates with me,” said Spike Lee. “It’s such a unique collaboration of your everyday consumer along with major worldwide brands and focuses purely around what the individual would like to celebrate about these brands.”
MOFILM has brought together the 12 brands, which include AT&T, Best Buy, PepsiCo (Doritos), Hewlett Packard, Kodak, Renaissance Hotels and Resorts, Nokia, Philips, Telstra Australia, Unilever (Omo),Visa and Vodafone International. Each brand will post a brief on the MOFILM website which will also detail guidelines to enter. Briefs are not limited to ideas linking directly to the brands themselves, but may also ask entrants to submit videos on additional topics that might include video demonstrations of a unique website experience. MOFILM will also team up with film industry professionals to offer creative advice to entrants via its Twitter page at designated dates and times throughout the competition.
“The U12 competition is a powerful demonstration of rarely seen collaboration from many of the world’s biggest brands,” said MOFILM CEO Andy Baker. “Collectively they are offering aspiring talent from around the world unprecedented access, visibility and opportunity into the sometimes closed world of mega-brand marketing.” Baker reports the initiative was conceived during a gathering of chief marketing officers who comprise the Marketing 50 and enabled through Accenture and the Marketing 50’s C-suite relationships. Accenture is supplying its video service platform that includes sharing and upload technology to support film submissions through Origin Digital, a video applications service providers. Hill & Knowlton, who are providing PR and the associated web 2.0 toolkit.
MOFILM will also be giving away 40 Kodak Zi6 Pocket Video Cameras to encourage early entry submission to the competition. Starting on April 22 and ending on May 20th, cameras will be awarded weekly to the best early entries received before May 20th for each brand. Early camera winners will still be eligible to qualify for all final prizes.
This event follows on from the successful MOFILM short film festival recently hosted by Kevin Spacey at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in February, which saw film makers from more than 100 countries compete to showcase their work and win prizes including a new Chevrolet Cruze.
Tags: Accenture, Cannes, Cannes Advertising Festival, mobile viewers, MOFILM, Nokia, Spike Lee, UGC, user-generated content, Vodafone
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 6:30 am and is filed under Advertising/Marketing, Content, Events, Home Feature.
