Phil “PhotoPhilCro” Crozier’s Final Canvas

50 new Nissan Cubes are driving off Canadian cubes dealer lots this month. Each one’s being driven by a brand advocate you only wish you had hired to tout your brand.

The new cars are the reward for months of creation and promotion by these musicians, DJs, dancers, programmers, designers, bloggers, podcasters, poets, writers and artists, and all kinds of creative thinkers; the cream of the crop of 500 competing “auditions” broadcast online over the last three months via social channels. Nissan openly called The Hypercube a social media marketing experiment, choosing to invest only in this channel, and is now pleased to announce (or tweet, perhaps) the successful proof of their thesis.

Nissan Canada’s creative agency, Capital C, went beyond the boilerplate hey-make-us-a-video and please-retweet-our-propaganda “campaigns” that are all too common these days, by offering prizes on which creative minds could really envision spending time and effort.

The Contest

Of 7000 applicants, 500 elite were given Hypercube canvases to audition for the mass public, stumping for daily votes with photos and animation, video, poetry and song. Competitors even took their campaigning offline, including Telma “TSwizz” Costa, who created and distributed pins to drive traffic, and Sean “Cube Man” Williams who literally drove offline traffic in his homemade cardboard Cube costume.

The cream rose quickly, as canvasses brought out the best from these competitors. And believe me, if you followed or friended any of them, you were hearing about it.

Over the course of the contest, so much exceptional content was created, it’s difficult to “highlight” the best stuff. Here are pieces of just three of the intense and daily updated canvasses:

Tony “Tony Holiday” Elston’s final canvas

Brittany Jade “Gunandagirl” Hanson’s final canvas

Delphine “Delf Berg” Bergeron’s final canvas

You can view all of the winning canvasses at thehypercube.ca

The Platforms

The Hypercube site was just the town hall of this experience, though, as competitors created videos on YouTube…

Posted images to Flickr…

Tweeted (like crazy)…

built web pages and blogs, and invoked social graphs from their other communities. For example, contestant Andre Molnar looked to leverage the passionate Drupal community, by promising to create the “Drupliconcube,” a Nissan cube “decked out in Druplicons, spreading the Drupal love to the streets.

Deeper Interactions

More than just pleas for votes, these daily updates became meaningful interactions between the competitors. Williams sent out a YouTube dance-off challenge to his fellow participants, and created this mashup:

Some social media users voiced disapproval of the campaign, including Shawn Micallef, who questioned the quality of the engagement suggests a line had been crossed, from daily updates from friends and outright spam. I disagree, as social media users are constantly pushing out posts and tweets that may annoy some, but be useful to others. This is the very nature of Social Currency, and one can, in fact, “Unfollow.” Furthermore, this type of repetition occurs with non-marketing events even more than with campaigns. When Michael Jackson died, or during the Obama campaign, the tidal wave of repetitious posts seemed to drown most other conversation. The Hypercube campaign wasn’t perfect, but neither is Facebook, nor Twitter, themselves.

The Finale

Such a momentous story had to end with an explosive climax, and on June 24, it did just that. Contestants gathered with friends at events simulcast in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. (Small-town contestants got together on their own in other provinces, too.) Contestants performed live between DJ sets, mingled over drinks, and sat in the highly-coveted Cubes on display. Winners were announced across the country via big screen video and some tight computer graphics. The dance floor of CiRCA in Toronto was like a minefield as groups of friends exploded in cheers when the local winners were listed off. It seemed like an endless supply of car keys were handed out, and many of the winners were ironically rendered speechless.

One can’t argue the level of quality and vastly disparate creative skillsets with which the Cube brand has been aligned.

The Outcome

Now, Nissan Canada has tons of authentic content to work with, generated by skilled creatives at a low cost. The winners are required to update their canvasses twice a month for the next year, but the brand will get a lot more than that, I predict, as these content generators are eager to share their experiences on the road. And they’ve also got promises to keep with their fans. Singer/Cube-winner Curtis Santiago promised to drive to a voter’s house in his cube, anywhere in Canada, to play a house party. No doubt he’ll be blogging and vlogging the whole trip.

I’ll admit, at first glance, I assumed Nissan Canada and Capital C’s campaign was a huge gamble. All too often, big brands create deep connections with new communities, but then drop these connections as soon as their campaign is over. Nissan has demonstrated how to think and plan long term; find–no, create passionate advocates who themselves created a plethora of content and awareness; and build a brand in partnership with their customers.

The Community

Moreover, this campaign was just the spark, a great success already, but the story of the Nissan Cube and the CubeCommunity is just beginning. Cubecommunity.ca teases us with a “coming soon” page, but the long-term strategy is obvious, as the community has all of the core requirements, starting with deeply invested and passionate community leaders. I look forward to following this community, and, in many ways, the hard work for Nissan and Capital C has just begun.

I’m happy to admit, the bar’s just been raised for “social media marketing.”

Filed under: Brands, Communities, Community, Ideas, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, Usability, User Experience, Web Strategy by Craig Ritchie
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Tags: agency, andre molnar, canada, capital c, creative, cube, cube man, cubecommunity.ca, hypercube, nissan, thehypercube, tswizz