Camden Council uses crowd sourcing

Camden Council in North London has crowd-sourced ideas for its latest outdoor campaign via Twitter.

Camden campaign

The North London council wanted to add a personal element to its integrated Christmas shopping campaign to encourage Londoners to shop locally in the borough, and used Twitter to create a dialogue with locals.

Followers of @lovecamden, the campaign’s Twitter feed, were invited to suggest what they would do with the £1000 prize on offer for shopping in local independent stores.

The three best suggestions now feature on outdoor posters around the borough. Each time a shopper spends £5 in a local store, they can enter the prize draw to win £1000.

The outdoor campaign is part of the council’s ongoing “Love Camden” local high street campaign which launched in June this year, followed by a website which launched in September.

The local high street campaign is part of a £6m recession recovery fund, which has helped the council boost small businesses during the recession.

As part of the initiative the London council has provided marketing advice to independent traders in the borough bought back empty shop units to allow pop-up shops to open with short-term leases.

“Councillor Andrew Marshall executive member for community development and planning, says: “The Love Camden campaign has already won celebrity backing with local residents Giles Coren and Ricky Gervais urging shoppers to take part. We hope our Twitter enthusiasts will inspire even more people to come and do their Christmas shopping in Camden.”

Peperami revealed the winners of its crowd-sourced ad brief this week, after breaking its 15-year relationship with advertising agency Lowe.