TED Issues Open Challenge to the Global Advertising Community: Create an Ad Worth Spreading

NEW YORK, Sept. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Inspired by the viral success of TEDTalks and expanding on the conference's mission of Ideas Worth Spreading, TED today announces its Ads Worth Spreading Challenge, a contest that serves as an open invitation to the global advertising community to reinvent, inspire and engage audiences with a new definition of what advertising can mean in the digital age, using TED.com as its platform.

"We want to encourage development of ads-with-a-difference," says TED's curator, Chris Anderson. "Ads that engage our audience authentically, intelligently, delightfully. Ads that people will want to share because, like the rest of TED, they encapsulate ideas worth spreading."

TED invites the business community to submit their most forward-looking video campaigns to the contest by January 10, 2011. A judging panel will select up to 10 winning video campaigns, which will premiere at TED2011, February 28-March 4, 2011, for the gathered audience of 1500+ thought leaders, and will appear on TED.com for free for one week in March.

During the week of March 21-27, 2011, the winning campaigns will occupy every available postroll ad space on TED.com, garnering roughly nearly 7M in free advertising impressions. In addition to appearing as post-roll after TEDTalks, each ad will also have a permanent page on TED.com, allowing the ad to be rated, shared, commented on and linked to, perhaps earning large numbers of additional views.

Submissions to the Ads Worth Spreading Challenge must be made in the form of a video, which can vary in length from 30 seconds to 5 minutes, and submitted in a common digital, downloadable format as detailed in our submission guidelines.

Videos must be promotional in nature, but can promote a company, cause, product or idea. It can promote a product, company or cause, but is likely to do so indirectly rather than directly -- for example, by showcasing the values, motivations and questions of the organization's people.  The ads may be commercial, PSAs or self-promotion.

The campaign should be new -- created between January 2010 and January 2011. Ideally, it should be new creative, but it is possible to submit campaigns that appeared elsewhere. Submissions must be received by midnight EST, January 10, 2011.

All entrants into the Ads Worth Spreading Challenge will be notified as to whether their video has been selected by Friday, February 25, 2011.

Full details and submission guidelines may be found here:

http://www.ted.com/adsworthspreading

About TED

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 26 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. At TED, the world's leading thinkers and doers are asked to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Benoit Mandelbrot, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Isabel Allende and former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Two major TED events are held each year: The TED Conference takes place every spring in Long Beach, California (along with a simulcast, TEDActive, in Palm Springs), and TEDGlobal is held each summer in Oxford, UK. TED's media initiatives include TED.com, where new TEDTalks are posted daily, the Open TV Project, bringing TEDTalks to global broadcast networks, and the Open Translation Project, which provides English subtitles and interactive transcripts and allows any TEDTalk to be translated into any language by volunteers worldwide. TED has established the annual TED Prize, where exceptional individuals win "one wish to change the world"; TEDx, which supports individuals and groups in hosting local, self-organized events around the world; and the TED Fellows program, helping world-changing innovators from around the globe to become part of the TED community and amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.

Follow TED on Twitter at twitter.com/TEDTalks, or on Facebook at facebook.com/TED

TEDWomen, "Shaping the Future," will be held December 7-8, 2010, in Washington DC, with partner events worldwide. TED2011, "The Rediscovery of Wonder," will be held February 28-March 4, 2011, in Long Beach, California, along with the TEDActive simulcast in Palm Springs, California. TEDGlobal 2011 will be held in the UK in July 2011.

SOURCE TED Conferences