The Tuna Cans Film Festival: A Perfect Throwback Marketing Strategy?

Would you make a movie about a can of tuna? Inspired by the Cannes Film Festival, Bumble Bee launched the Tuna Cans Film Festival - a search for the best storyteller and short film depicting tuna in some way with a cash prize of $25,000. If this idea seems familiar, it may be because this strategy of brands hosting a consumer generated ad contest was hugely popular years ago. Doritos famously ran a decade long campaign to show the winning consumer generated ad from their "Crash the Super Bowl" contest in an expensive Super Bowl ad slot. Then the idea was retired back in 2016 ... before being resurrected this past year.

What Doritos and apparently now Bumble Bee Tuna are both doing is something many other brands should consider too. Given the intersection of the rise of visibility for top creators and a growing number of AI tools that allow content creators to work more quickly and (potentially) produce higher quality results without big budgets, it seems we should be in a new golden era for consumer generated advertising.

Why shouldn't more brands put out invitations to their customers, offer up a cash prize and benefit from a flood of content produced by consumers to promote their brand for free? You might see this as manipulative, or a great potential marketing opportunity. Either way, I suspect film festivals about tuna cans are only the beginning of this trend.