Brand Awareness & Crowdsourcing

I spotted this campaign today if only because it sparked some memories over a conversation I once had about using crowdsourcing to grow brand awareness. Ben & Jerry's, the ice cream brand established in the USA by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield is as you might have thought - well known in the USA and although it has an stablished presence in Australia, the brand is not nearly as strong as in the good ol' US of A. So what do they do? Hold a Flavour Election and ask Australian ice cream fanatics to vote for their preferred Ben & Jerry’s flavour - crowdsourcing used perfectly. 

Eight flavour election campaign leaders (one for each flavour that is sold in shops) have been selected to lead the race for eight flavours, and oh man do I love some of these names - For example: Half Baked, Phish Food and Triple Chunkey Monkey! Australian readers can enter the competition to get ice cream delivered to to their office on Fridays until the end of the campaign when one lucky person will be chosen to receive a year’s supply of the ice cream. Intensive enough?  Check out the campaign video.

I quite like this campaign although have a feeling they could have taken it a couple of steps further. For example I think it would have been great to have a first round where a representative from the pubic could be voted in as the leader or a flavour (could even give them a campaign budget and team)  and there also the obvious one of asking the public to both name and create new flavours. Either way there is something in this….