EasyJet has formed a partnership with MySpace to launch a branded community allowing consumers to upload photos and video footage of holiday destinations around the world.
EasyJet intends to create a gallery of ‘interesting and little-known sights’ to provide the community with a range of holiday and weekend break suggestions accesible via EasyJet flights. Each week a panel of judges will select the best photo and video submission to be entered into a competition.
This for me is certainly one of the most relevant and better brand uses of MySpace, as it does draw upon that uniting thing that all marketers love…shared experience. Although it will be interesting to see what direction the community takes the site - from dirty alleys in Ibiza to well trodden backpacker routes, or maybe something a bit more cultured?
But with the massive increase in photo and video capabilities of mobiles, this is an area that will become increasingly more important for brands acting as facilitators, as predicted by Trendwatching.com:
“As camera and video phones are becoming both ubiquitous and more powerful, reviews of anything and everything will go multimedia. The impact? Well, a picture says more than a thousand words, and a video says more than a thousand pictures. Everything brands do or don’t do will end up on YouTube, or on an undoubtedly soon to be launched YouTube clone dedicated to product reviews.”