Say cheese

I've noticed the new Canon campaign "Freecording" popping up in relevant ad placements across Flickr and YouTube (where else?). It's a decent enough campaign, showing you that poor quality video and sound is a thing of the past with Canon's new range of HD camcorders, and it offers a neat set of rules about how to free yourself and create the video masterpiece you always had in you. Nice enough, but there's no interactivity, which I would have thought this would have been all about. There's some video content created by some reasonably cool film makers, but I would have expected something like "add your own freecording" or at least some activity / tagging across video / photo sharing sites. I found one tag on You Tube, nothing on Flickr and nothing on any of the social sites.

I'm reminded of Lomo, who had this thing down to a tee. Their site was all about the camera(s), all about how to use it, and all about encouraging you to have a go yourself and share them with other people. This was back in 2001, and it's still going strong, with a wider range of cameras and an even larger user base.

The point is, Lomo built a brand out of taking something which was far from perfect, and injecting interaction and easy access to make it something we could all feel a part of and benefit from. They gave you some simple starters (check out the 10 Golden Rules of Lomo) backed it up with the best product packaging I've ever come across (unpacking your Lomo from it's casing was really something special) and encouraged you to not be shy and keep it all to yourself, but share with others who were as passionate about photography, and Lomo, as you were.

Canon are a great brand, with a near flawless product. I've been a fan forever, but they could take that loyalty and create something as special as Lomo if they wanted to. Freecording feels like it could start that process, but it needs to open itself up to everyone.