• by Laurie Petersen , October 9, 2006

Yahoo plans to create the World's First Digital Time Capsule, and later this month will invite consumers to submit digital clips, photos and videos to include in the effort.

Cammie Dunaway, chief marketing officer, outlined the project during her session at the ANA Masters of Marketing conference describing Consumer 2.0. She said the event will start online with promotion on Yahoo and places such as Flickr, where content generation proliferates.

Yahoo will then travel to the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico and project the work off the pyramid, turning a global social networking event into "content exposed to the galaxy."

The campaign is just the latest way Yahoo practices what Dunaway calls "participation marketing," by encouraging its most fervent users to submit their own content and to become ambassadors for the brand. The company's four pillars of marketing, she said, are: Search, Content, Community and Personalization.

What Yahoo users contribute ranges from videos of themselves shaking it up to Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" to advice and counsel in the form of Yahoo Answers.

The company has dubbed some of these experts certified "Answers Brainiacs," and uses them to evangelize the brand through media appearances.

Dunaway said Yahoo is strategic about who it proactively invites to submit content, and encourages its most ardent fans who are least likely to submit things that the community would consider hurtful.

A "continental divide" exists, she said, between those over 25 and those under. The under-25s are unabashed about making everything public. Those over 25 still want to connect, but with a smaller circle of family and friends, she says.

Dunaway also spouted some interesting factoids about today's multitasking consumer. She said that among consumers with broadband connections at home, 81 percent bring their computers into the bedroom, 51 percent into the kitchen, and 20 percent into the bathroom.

Meanwhile, she said, the overlapping of work and life is such today that 37 million people average 50 minutes a day managing their fantasy football teams from the office.