This week, check out Tourism Vancouver's contest Inside Vancouver at insidevancouver.strutta.com and a handy tip from Jordan!

Check out the contests: 3BN.BCIT.ca, and StudentVideoContest09.AdmissionsQuest.com

This morning we are very proud to announce the launch of a new contest for the Give a Better Life Foundation, entitled "Vote for Your Cause."

Give a Better Life Foundation is a local non-profit that works with a number of great charities, and have compiled a list of 11 incredibly worthy causes for their first online contest. How it works is very simple:

• Mouse over to choose a charity from the slider at the top of the video window
• Then watch the charity videos until you've decided which should receive the charity prize of $5000.
• Fill out the form to submit your vote, and you'll be entered to win a great coffee prize pack from Better Life Brands Coffee that includes: free coffee for a year, a coffee machine and a selection of fine chocolate bars.
• Then please consider spreading the word about this contest to your friends and family. 

The 11 charities entered in the contest are all very deserving, so deciding who to vote for can be a tough. Take your time and enjoy the process. The point is YOU get to choose which cause is deserving of the cash donation. 

From the Give a Better Life Foundation website:

Our unique, interactive foundation works closely with you, so collectively we can decide on causes that are important by offering assistance and awareness through trusted partnerships.

The Strutta team is not only very proud of work on this promotion, but also of the Better Life Foundation for adding a fun, interactive new spin on charitable giving and offering some much-needed visibility to these 11 worthy causes. At the end of the promotion, the Foundation will hold a Gala where the winner's will be announced. If you wish to attend, tickets can be purchased through the Better Life Brands site. 

If you want to donate to the Give a Better Life Foundation directly, visit their donation page and the rest is completely up to you.  

In November of 2005, two dudes in white lab coats and protective glasses dropped pieces of Mentos (the fresh maker!) into bottles of Diet Coke. Geysers of soda erupted from the bottles, video cameras recorded the action and the resulting video of "Experiment #10" was just the start of what can only be described as an internet phenomenon.

By the time they had reached Experiment #137 (above), kids were already buying Mentos by the handful and making their own fountains and rockets the world over.

To their credit, Mentos was thrilled. In spite of early indifference, Coke managed to finally come around to appreciating the new life its brand had found on the web as well. This serves as just one example among many of regular folks using the internet to discuss, evangelize or even criticize brands and products, of their own will. Like anything new and exciting (not to mention cheap or free), advertisers were scrambling to find a way to generate viral successes of their own, sometimes with undesired results. 

When done right though, advertising that comes directly from fans of brands is the very best kind. It's the new media equivalent of a testimonial, but also proof that the creator was dedicated enough to put a considerable amount of time into creating it. To say that this kind of advertising is more genuine and convincing than the status quo would be something of an understatement.

New business models are even springing up as a result of this exciting trend. Take for example Adhack, a local startup based around "people powered advertising," offering advertisers a chance to access the talents of all manners of small creative agencies and home-based media creators for considerably less expense than a traditional mainstream media model. 

To recap some of the more successful examples of User Generated Advertising, we talked to Adhack's Founder, James Sherrett via email, who pointed us to a few successes in this space. 

James' picks:

1. Doritos. (Also currently running a UK contest on YouTube)

Their main web presence is now dedicated to "Snack Strong Productions," which is all about user generated ads, and a conest that could see those ads run during the most expensive airtime on North American network TV. As James notes, "They've bought Super Bowl ad space for 3 consecutive years for user-generated ads." 

2. Heinz. Their "Top This" TV Challenge is now in Round Two, having already chosen a winner from the first round.

3. Utilikilts. Not the biggest brand in this list, and something of a niche product (kilts for everyday wear!) but they've been accepting and running "Mock-u-mercials" since their beginning. As James notes, "It's not trendy for them, it's just the way they roll." They've got loads of them too; a great exmaple of brand affinity among their customers.

4. Apple. Nick Haley's iPod Touch commercial went from fan-generated "for fun" project to being aired on TV, seemingly overnight. Haley explains it best: "I loved the look of the new iPod Touch, found this music, and thought it was perfect for it. I made a commercial using material from apple.com and editing in Apple's Final Cut Pro." 

Watch it in full, complete with YouTubey grey messiness at the front: 

Our thanks to James for these suggestions, and a tip to would-be advertisers thinking of using this model: Make sure that the video player you choose to use for your submissions has an option to embed the commercials on sites other than your own! That is, after all, the point of all of this, is it not? 

If you have more examples of a great fan-built advertising or media submission contests, or if you just want to share your thoughts on the above, feel free to do so in the comments. 

*James Sherrett photo by Kris Krug.

I spotted this on Freyburg.com, a presentation by Micheal Wesch at the Library of Congress about the anthropology of YouTube. 

Wesch created a (positively brilliant, imo) video entitled "The Machine is Us/ing Us" earlier this year that shot to the top of the YouTube charts; it serves as just one of loads of examples that he uses here to illustrate the similarities and differences between life online, on a webcam, and in real life. His students at Kansas State University assisted in a semester long research project, and this speech is the culmination of that work. 

It runs a little long for an online video, but the content is fascinating throughout its 55 min run time: