Consumer Participation is a Joking Matter at Hal Riney

I've seen a few blogs talking about the campaign YourInsideJoke.com from Hal Riney (bias alert: the agency still holds a special place in my heart) for  U.S. Cellular. I like this campaign because it leverages very personal jokes and allows them to be shared on a much larger scale. The consumer participation is the engine that supplies the content. I liked the fact that they allow people to submit their own photos (not sure if the client has copy right concerns) or draw a visual of what their joke represents. I liked the inside joke about the person who couldn't get the noodles out of their thermo, so they turned it upside down and they all fell out.

The stories and the site itself just breeds the need to be shared and propagated. The navigation and user experience of the site is just simply amazing.

This is what Creativity said about the campaign:

Publicis & Hal Riney along with Swedish agency Perfect Fools has launched a new site for U.S Cellular that lets you share an inside joke with close friends - and everyone else.

Visitors to the site can create custom messages by uploading photos and scrawling or drawing images using a color palette and brush. If you're just curious, you can click around images to sample the submissions. The U.S Cellular site also lets you post your inside joke on social networking destinations and is being supported by several TV spots.