Norfolk music tech company Vinylmint is crowdsourcing part of the production of Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao’s movie trailer to celebrate the U.S. release of the movie “Manny.” Such crowd participation is a powerful tool for advertising a brand.
To share the song and movie’s message, Vinylmint is asking fans to submit clips of themselves singing their favorite parts of “Face Your Destiny” to be included in the movie trailer. To entice submissions, a prize of $350 and autographed boxing shoes will be given to a winner chosen by online voters.
How did Manny Pacquiao catch wind of Vinylmint?
I had worked with Chad Hugo and his management company Yardnoise on a record and listening party. We began to build community around local brands using sound and crowd-generated video elements to create advertising messages.
Manny Pacquaio worked with Hugo to sing and produce the title song for the movie, ?Face Your Destiny.” Yardnoise and Team Manny then saw a way to leverage the power of his fans around the world to promote the movie.
When reaching today?s millennial audience, it is all about connecting with them by allowing their creativity and voices to tell stories.
This isn’t something new. Our project was inspired by Johnny Cash?s last hit single and music video, ?Ain?t No Grave,? which was a crowd-created music video illustrated through the use of eight still frames. The project garnered lots of attention and received more than 400,000 illustration submissions from people all over the world. After the video was edited, it was released to the public and immediately went viral.
Today, we are at an interesting point of evolution for the field of marketing. Singular sources no longer dictate what is popular or unique. Today, the customers’ spheres of influence dictate what is popular or unique.
Crowd-generated brand assets allow the lovers of a product and service to participate in the delivery and style of the message. As the members of the crowd become champions of that message, they begin to lead their friends to your brand. This is awesome for two reasons. First, their friends decrease the barriers one may have when receiving a promotion. Secondly, if friends are inspired, they will also create visuals and share the message in a relatable way to their inner circles.
The best way to describe it is like this: the company creates a blank easel with their products or services and they ask numerous fans to paint their interpretation of what the brand should look like.
