Go fund yourself

A few years ago, crowdfunding was only a buzzword, which was not known for the mainstream public. Over the last few years, Kickstarter has changed this totally. The company has attracted more than five million contributors pledging close to $1 billion, funding more than 55,000 individual projects. Crowdfunding has become a common way to gain funds in times when banks are not eager to lend money and where people are looking for projects to invest in. A lot of succesfull crowdfunding campaings excist which solve real problems and provide good examples for regular marketing campaings. With an effective pitch and an ambitious goal, pledges (Kickstarters’s word for supporters) are surely coming your way.

A lot of good examples can be told about crowdfunding on Kickstarter, making it the number one crowdsourcing platform in the world. However, the platform also attracks loads of less succesfull initiatives. Without the right motive, crowdsourcing platforms are doomed to fail. There are a lot of examples where people seek for pledgers to subsidize a healthy income. For instance, a Kickstarter project excisted which wanted money for writing a Christian cartoon using a free drawing programme. A lot of bands also try to get funds for recording albums and come out empty handed.

Recently, Southpark has devoured a whole episode on Kickstarter, ridiculing projects like beforementioned. The boys start up a company called ‘The Washington Redskins’, named after the football team. It is hilarious to see the prejudices about crowdfunding coming by. It also stated again how relevant Kickstarter is in the present society and that people will always have to be critical about projects on the platform.

http://www.southpark.nl/full-episodes/s18e01-go-fund-yourself

Do you think that crowdsourcing will become even more popular in the future or will people go back to the traditional form of funding through banks and private investers?

References

– http://www.southpark.nl/full-episodes/s18e01-go-fund-yourself

– http://www.forbes.com/sites/amadoudiallo/2014/01/24/crowdfunding-secrets-7-tips-for-kickstarter-success/

– http://www.buzzfeed.com/cconnelly/the-15-worst-kickstarter-projects-of-all-time-s3x

Interactive billboards

As an enthousiast about marketing and advertising I follow the website Adweek, where creative and innovative ads are discussed. Ads which are linked to big sports events like the Super Bowl always get a lot of attention, as well as other big brands who have a big advertising budget. However, smaller brands also feature on this site and sometimes they can do things totally different. Earlier on this week I came across the video below, which is an ad of a Swedish company who had launched a new shampoo. The high-tech billboard which is placed in the subway and displays a woman’s head. When the train arrives the woman’s hair is blown aside, as if she was there in person. The ad was scheduled for only one day, but because of the amount of attention it gained, the advertising agency decided to display it for five more days.

After the succes of this ad, another interactive ad was placed in the same style. However, this ad has a different twist, as it ends with the girl’s hair being blown away, leaving only a chemo balded head. There were debates about the legitimacy of this ad, however it is still very interesting to think about this new way of making ads. Information about the environment is used to create an interaction as people get more engaged with the ad. If this technology would become more widespread and cheaper to implement, it could change the current business model of the billboard industry. Think about ads who get toggled when people walk by and therefore attract way more attention than the normal billboards. This would require a good information model, which is easy to implement and can react on changes in the environment. Will we see ads like these in the Netherlands as well in the near future?

References:

– http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/wonderful-subway-ad-shows-womans-hair-blowing-around-just-train-arrives-155986

– http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/another-subway-ad-blows-womans-hair-around-trains-arrive-theres-twist-160588

– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdQgsmYKxLM

– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=064ipuBiWDg