Unilever have now been added to the list of companies that are recruiting the general public to create their next TV advertising campaign. Since 1993, Unilever has used a design agency called Lowe for creating their adverts for their Peperami brand.

However, now they have decided to alter the way they approach advertising and they are opting for a more public touch. Unilever will be offering around £6,000 for the winning advert that involves their well known animal character. The IdeaBounty website will be the host for this new advertising competition, the host website is also host to other designing competitions from big brand names. Once a winner is picked, they will be be able to build their idea into a new TV advert with the aid of a special TV advertising agency, SmartWorks.

Unilever are cetainly not the first brand to hold a competition for a new advertising idea from the general public. Last year both Pringles and Doritos created competitions to allow the public to create a TV advert, you’ve most likely seen them on TV.

Both of these competition winners came out better for it after they spent very little money on the adverts that they built. The grand prize winner of the Doritos competition only spend £10 on making their advert which was made with stop motion filming and a bag of crisps. The winning Pringles advert cost a little bit more to make, £300 was spent making it, however, the winners still made a profit after they received their £2,000 winnings, certainly a lot less than what a real TV ad agency would have received for doing the job.

There are unknown reasons why companies go for a public approach compared to a UK graphic design company, the reason for such a change could be a result of many things. Most companies use the reason that they get more creative and popular ideas from the public compared to hiring a specialist agency. However, a couple of other reasons could be to blame, the first one is that by holding a competition, they create more talk about the brand itself. The other reason, which sounds most likely, is that it works out a whole lot cheaper to run a competition and give away a few thousand compared to paying tens of thousands for a professional job.