In Darknet I wrote about an enterprising startup out of San Diego called DivX, and when I was a columnist with Engadget, I interviewed Jordan Greenhall and Shahi Ghanem, the company’s top execs.
Jordan is still with DivX (saw him recently at Pixelodeon), but Shahi has moved on to co-found a Web 2.0 marketing company, Brickfish. The site’s tagline: "View. Vote. Create. Connect. Brickfish connects you to the bands, brands and things you’re passionate about."
The company is all about creating a new platform for driving consumer interaction and response through (brace for dreaded buzzword) User Generated Content. Specifically, they’ve working with about 100 clients so far in music, lifestyle and fashion to create campaigns that involve customers at a deep-rooted level.
In the spring, Brickfish designed a campaign in which Bone
Thugs N Harmony fans created new album covers (most in limited release) for the band’s new album. About 1,200 people participated for each winning entry in the “viral, p2p consumer-driven marketing effort,” Ghanem told me in a brief phone
interview.
A move into politics
Brickfish’s newest efforts center on sports, entertainment and politics. A few days ago Brickfish partnered with public policy think tank The Reform Institute to launch a “Design Your Portion of the Border Fence” campaign. The contest, which runs through Sept. 13, invites entrants to offer their opinions on the U.S.-Mexico border fence debate. Participants are encouraged to combine imagination and passion with artistic interpretations of what border-crossers should see when traveling from one side of the border to the other.
A war songs campaign, running through Sept. 15, invites both aspiring vocalists and impassioned activists of any political stripe to put their views about war to music. Prize winners get up to $500. (Personally, this doesn’t strike me as fertile turf for a marketing company, but kudos for charting new waters.)
“We want content creators to interact with brands and share their creations on their Facebook, MySpace, Xanga and Friendster pages,” Ghanem said. “We’re finding that a single piece of content can drive 800 to 1,200 interactions with the brand within 30 days. The multiplier effects are enormous."
Brickfish’s model is completely based on pay for performance or cost per engagement. "We get paid only when consumers take action, vote, share or play content," he said. "This is really web advertising 2.0. We’re changing the way online marketing works, using content as a catalyst.”
I don’t have the space here to provide a full rundown of their services — just a note to say, These folks are doing something very interesting.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
Hello JD,
Very interesting post about Brickfish. I had been following them because of my site’s focus on Fashion and Online Marketing (fashion-fox.com). They have come up with very compelling user-generated campaingns for fashion brands.
I did not know about their new effort in the political field. In France, during this year’s presidential campaign, user generated videos and songs were quite popular on YouTube and DailyMotion. Maybe Brickfish will foster the creation of the same kind of content.
If politics ends up not working well at Brickfish, at least it is a good PR story for the company, at election times.
You can see some samples of how Brickfish works. Here are 3 entries hat I’m on for 3 different campaigns. This is really awesome because we can show our skills related to design, creativity, inspiration and more! A good source to contact people and make friends!