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a youtube for human rights (22.024545601240337 , 96.15234375) The coverage of the recent and continued protests in Burma, shows just how powerful amateur footage can be. In a country closed to most journalists and censoring news, the amateur is often only way people in the outside world can see what's going on.

Witness is a human rights organization dedicated to helping people use technology to record and document human rights abuses. They do a ton of work making sure the equipment gets out to the people who need it and make sure the footage is seen. It therefore seems a logical next step that Witness would bring all this content together in one central location. To do this, Witness just launched The Hub, which is kind of a YouTube for human rights.

The CGM conversation has mostly been about people doing things to benefit corporations or photography that big media has access to.

There's clearly another side to this where amateurs document situations of abuse that under normal conditions would never be captured.


Posted by Ed Cotton A was fortunate enough to have been invited to speak at Trumpet's inspirational Polygamous Marriage conference in New Orleans. In essence, it was all about the coming together of media, account planning and creative- connections planning.

It was a great event and some inspiring presentations. (Much more to follow).

John King from Fallon spoke about lots of things, but included the idea of thinking about consumers, not as the creators, but as editors of content.

A nice evolution of the current zeitgeist.

To demonstrate, he showed us how the Cadbury's gorilla ad had morphed into a variety of different edits, some created by people and others created by the agency to inspire people to do it themselves.

The Original- 2 million views plus...



Bonnie Tyler- Remix- 238,000 views



50 Cent Remix- 127,849 views



Bon Jovi Remix- 24,075 views



I know this is old news to many, but the idea of providing content that can be played with, edited and throwing out examples for people to follow is really smart.

It keeps the idea alive and engages the consumer in the process.


Posted by Ed Cotton We’ve currently going through the first wave of consumer generation; brands have reached out to consumers and ask them to help in their marketing efforts, Heinz’s recent ketchupfest attracted an incredible 4,000 entries, with  5 winners making it onto TV. They company staging a repeat of the contest to run in the Fall. 

Sitting across the highway from these efforts, are brands like Threadless, who’ve capitalized on the artistry of creative individuals, allowing them to design product and make some money.

At the fringes there are signs of a new revolution brewing, one that turns the notion of producer and consumer on its head. The idea that the consumers develop, create and control the destiny of the brands they create.

The best example of this is Myfootballclub.co.uk, where 50,000 soccer fans have signed up and paid a fee of $70. This has given the group access to considerable funds, in fact they have enough money to purchase as soccer club and are currently in negotiations to do just that.


Is there a possible future where thousands of consumers get together to form buying clubs and create products and services with no direct involvement from corporations?



Posted by Ed Cotton Bill Tancer of Hitwise recently presented some interesting stats on participation levels on Web 2.0 sites, his research found that only .16% of all YouTube visits were to upload video and only 0.2% of Flickr visits were to upload photographs.

As we are in the “Participation Age” there seems to be a need to expand the number of participants. It’s questionable if brands are doing enough and by brands, we mean these Web 2 brands and creative brands in general; video cameras, computer brands, digital camera brands, printer brands, etc….

Obviously, the 1% rule is being played out, but think of the market potential if that 1% could be increased to 2%.

Brands in this space need to think about how they can encourage participation, this is part incentive and partly education. The education part is important and can obviously there need to be different streams for different segments; from the non-user, to the user who isn’t interested in sharing.

Clearly all brands that want to move into the Web 2 space and create community and conversation need to listen up, this stuff doesn’t just magically happen, it needs encouragement and education.

One interesting example is the Daily Telegraph newspaper in the UK, yesterday it launched a blogging service for its readers. For many, this could sound foolish, given the abundance of free blogging platforms, but this is smart as it’s going to attract their readers who trust DT more than the small blogging brands. In addition, in a challenging time for newspapers, there is a lot to gain by doing this and is reaching out and providing education and utility for a new group of participants.



Participation is the tangible offshoot of engagement, which has become the fashionable thing to try and measure these days.

It’s clear, if brands want thriving communities and strong brand relationships, they need do more than pay lip service to the notion of participation.

Is participation a new metric for engagement?