Pot Noodle has launched a user-generated advertising campaign hosted on YouTube.
Owner Unilever has invited users to submit videos of themselves eating the snack in unusual places – for each video submitted, the company will send out 12 Pot Noodles.
The campaign is the latest to aim to leverage the loyalty of consumers, who now have easy access to media recording and distribution channels, to gather raw material for advertising.
The trend was most notably represented when car-maker Chevrolet last year asked folk to create their own 30-second commercial for its Tahoe vehicle.
Pot Noodle is hosting its campaign on video sharing network YouTube but contestants can also enter via mobile MMS, email or the snack’s own website.
The video with the most views on YouTube each month, however, will win a Sony PlayStation 3.
So far, it hasn’t been a runaway success. The Pod Noodle channel on YouTube has received only 1,771 views and 24 subscribers since launching a month ago.