No Income? Apply for a Golden Grant!

General Mills has created a campaign with a pretty cool premise, Golden Grant. It targets those who have fallen victim to the plummeting economy.

A spin-off of both Twitter and FML, the Golden Grant microsite asks users to share their “ridiculous job search story” in 140 characters or less. The most “convincing” economical sob stories become short films. The winners get a generous supply of Golden Grahams to allay their fears of starvation…

As with any user-submitted-content-based campaign, I fear that people will exercise their drama skills and simply falsify or exaggerate their personal experiences. Also, I wonder how original the idea really is. Either way, I believe it’s a risk worth taking. Something tells me a lot of laughter (and maybe sympathy) is on the way.

Million Dog Mosaic in Brandweek.

Nice case study from Brandweek on Pedigree's Million Dog Mosaic below.

Case Study: Pedigree's Million-Dog Mosaic
Feb 21, 2009
-By Kenneth Hein

The Challenge
Every year, more than four million dogs end up in shelters. Pedigree decided to do something about it by creating the Pedigree Adoption Drive Foundation last year. The charitable organization is dedicated to helping shelters and rescue groups find homes for dogs. Now the issue was how could the Mars Petcare division raise awareness and money for its cause.

The Plan
The foundation and the "Million Dog Mosaic" were promoted at Pedigree.com, Dogsrule.com as well as at Milliondogmosaic.com/pedigree. Each time a consumer uploaded a photo of their favorite dog onto the site, the Pedigree brand donated $1 to the foundation. The mosaic was promoted via a custom Facebook application, the Westminster Dog Show Pedigree Pop-up dog store as well as integration with its advertising campaign, which features the hero adoption dog, "Oliver." Oliver is featured on the site comprised of consumers' uploaded photos. It was featured on a nonprofit channel on YouTube and targeted e-mails sent to an in-house database also got the word out. Catapult Action-Biased Marketing helped put the effort together.

The Results
In one month, there were more than 1 million page views of the mosaic. To date, more than 55,000 photos have been uploaded. It set the record for user-generated mosaic participation, beating American Idol. "It signified that Pedigree is a company that walks the walk when it comes to fully aligning with the values of its consumers," said John Anton, director of marketing at Pedigree. "A million dollars was raised for the Pedigree adoption drive. [The campaign] brought together dog lovers in a fun place where they could be entertained, do research on the best way to feed and treat their dogs, join a like-minded community and be rewarded for their engagement."