See him passionately reading the bible on the street corner, while being videoed? Don’t avert your gaze and quickly walk around him. Take a closer look. 
You may be witnessing a clever method that you could adapt to drawing attention to your favorite cause, idea, product or organization both in-person and online.
Here’s how. While this public reading is part of a global campaign with an awkwardly defensive title in the “I don’t beat my wife” tradition, the underlying method is clever.
It takes a crowdsourced approach to involving fervent fans in drawing attention to their beloved book – the Bible. The campaign, dubbed, “I Am Not Ashamed” invites Christians to take a friend with a video camera to a public place to stand and read a favorite bible verse. They then submit their video clip to the web site. With so many people reading scripture the site will eventually have readings from the entire bible – a big deal for Christians.
What “First Ever” Can You Invite Kindred Spirits to Co-Create?
With this novel approach they are creating something valuable, and you can too. They’ll have a searchable video compendium of the Bible that can attract more believers and media attention as the project unfolds.
You could adapt this approach to involving your customers, fans or club members in highlighting something about which you have a shared interest. You can get your project underwritten by businesses that also want to reach your “market” of participants.
For example, Matt danced with people around the world then invited others to create their own public dance and post it to his site. In so doing he drew a larger crowd and a sponsor.
As an author, you can boost book sales by inviting people to get a tool kit or start a group, based on your book. Why not ask them to also submit videos that demonstrate some tip from the book?
Alternatively, how could your product be worn, used or demonstrated in inventive ways – inviting people to post their clips on your site?
What if your association or club members were invited to create a tag line for your organization or new program, then act out a scene that demonstrates it? Then you turned the submissions into a video vignette. Chapters of your member-based group could compete for the best video vignette.
Alternatively, invite all members to come to one place to act out their part in a movie of tips for people like them, as biznik did.
Reward People for Participating
To recognize the most popular submitters (thus encouraging more people to contribute) by enabling members to vote on their favorite submissions. The contributors of the top five most popular submissions win prizes (perhaps downloadable e-coupons) from your business partners that benefit from pulling your members into their place of business to redeem their prizes, the e-Coupons.
Remember, when you attract a constituency you also attract a sponsor as Matt did.
Be sure to make it easy for people to find your crowdsourced video project, submit their video, brag about it, comment on other’s videos and invite friends to participate.
That means your project has a blog, Facebook fan page, and accounts on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Posterous account.
