Dave Weinberger links to Kayak.com, which is running a build your own ad campaign. Kayak is a travel comparison site, for flights, hotels and all the other things you need on trips. I love the way it also pulls together all the reviews for hotels as well as all the prices.
The company is now starting to run national ads and is looking for further input from the fans of the sites, with a competition to build your own add wither through a tool kayak provides or on your own. The winner gets a trip to New York and their ad prefessionally remade and then used nationally. The sense of humour comes through strongly on their own ads, so there is plenty of scope…and the instructions make it clear what they are after:
* You must be funny. If you are not funny, don’t try to start now.
* You must own or have rights to the images you submit.
* Keep it clean; no porn.
* Keep it cleaner; no swearing, either.
* Don’t use our tool to make us look dumberer.
* We get a copy to post (it IS our tool and our brand).
* Oh, yeah. You must be funny.
Looking at some of the ones submitted to date, it looks like people are playing within the rules.
Kayak joins the growing number of companies that are asking for this kind of involvement from their users, with varying degrees of success. It depends on the level of respect that exists between the users and the brand, in both directions. This camapign looks like it is moving from a good starting place.
