Pointillism With Spot Runner

by Josh Lovison, Mar 20, 2007, 11:15 PM

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Pointillism, for those that don't know, is painting by using a bunch of monotone dots, unimpressive on their own, but organizing them in such a way on the canvas that the result can be staggering. Google Seurat for examples. Today's Spot Runner talk got my mind racing, drawing in a recollection of another impressive talk yesterday: that of Jason McDonell, who talked of the Doritos Super Bowl UGC ad campaign. Basically, he let these guys make an ad that appeared on TV's largest event. But what was interesting was all the workings behind the scenes of that concept -- and the fact that they received over a thousand submissions. Which is where the pointillism comes in. Spot Runner has inventory to use in placement, which is great for the little guy. But what about the big guys? The brands, who use TV as perhaps the most effective mechanism to sear themselves on our collective consciousness? Well some of them have been trying to establish authentic meaningful experiences involving their brand by turning to UGC. Which is great, but perhaps the campaigns so far have been falling far short of their promise. The reaction of the finalists to the Doritos campaign was very positive -- they certainly have good feelings toward the brand after participating. But what about the other 995 submissions? Consider a UGC campaign where the best ads of a small geographic area, perhaps as small as a single town, were shown respective to whatever town produced them, all simultaneously at an announced time. For Doritos that would have been a thousand groups of friends and family, and school mates or coworkers, all watching one channel, at one time, waiting for their friend or family member's spot to air on TV. That's quite a number of meaningful experiences. Agree/Disagree? Miss the point? (yes, this last one is a pun)

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