ChasNote

iMediaConnection invited me to contribute to the Best & Worst of 2007 round up. My favorite campaign of the year: Ask.com’s sponsorship of Ask A Ninja. The campaign that made best use of user-generated content — if you count editorial posts on Boing Boing or OhGizmo “user generated” — was HP iPaq 510’s sponsorship of “voice posts.” The agency that, to me, went furthest in pushing the envelope was Goodby Silverstein for Sprint’s WaitLess.org concept, HP’s campaign around voice posts (above), and HP’s Blackbird gaming system launch.

Boing Boing’s David Pescovitz thanks HP “for supporting the development of all our new community features.” That doesn’t happen every day: Hundreds of advertisers have run on Boing Boing over the past 3 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen the Boing Boing editors thank one by name. Perhaps it’s because HP didn’t just write Boing Boing a check and send them ad tags — they helped the Boingers improve the site by financially supporting the roll out of new features. Intel had a similar experience when they sponsored the launch of Digg Arc, and found themselves getting thanked by Digg staff and the Digg community.