Jake, I am familiar with crowd sourcing. I have done a few of those deals and in one I became a Associate Producer of a short movie. I received formal movie credit and my name is even listed on IMDb (
Thomas Stone - IMDb.) Hey, before you guys start hatin' on this, remember this is LA - everyone's gotta have some movie cred!
With that being said, I am not a big fan of the Volvo idea so I'll try to make you a better offer: How about a real summer marketing internship/job?
One of the small businesses that I own designs and manufactures the Robotop (
Robo-Top, One-Touch Convertible Top Module for 996 Cabriolets and 986 Boxsters).
I'd like to increase sales of the Robotop and I'll fund up to $750 as a marketing budget. Your role will be to design a marketing campaign using the $750 budget and I'll pay you $25 for every Robotop that is sold between the start and end of the marketing campaign.
Of course, I'll give you a free Robotop so you can understand the product and its value proposition to customers.
You'll have to write a marketing plan clearly saying exactly what I should do to increase sales and why.
External spending has to be within the budget and with that small of a budget you're going to have to be creative. We won't be able to hire any supermodel spokespersons or sponsor a Formula 1 team, but we might be able to do some pay per click advertising, paid Facebook ads, or whatever else you recommend.
Then we'll work together to launch and execute the marketing plan. We'll monitor progress and make any adjustments needed along the way. At the end of the campaign I'd like you to write a short report summarizing what worked, what didn't work, and why.
This is a legit offer. We can work out the details outside the Forum.
PM me if you're interested.