Attention Creatives! Enter the UrgentGenius Newsjacking competition this weekend

My friends over at UrgentGenius have just kicked off the second annual Newsjacking competition and you are invited to enter.

But you've got to act fast because the contest starts today and you only have this weekend to create something awesome.

Hey, it's real-time stuff we're talking here – so it's a real-time contest.

The brief is simple

The challenge is open to advertising and PR folk, coders, students, filmmakers, bedroom mash-up experts, and, well, YOU.

Just choose a trending topic and create a reaction to it in the space of 48 hours.

But you've got to register first.

Anything goes, as long as it's topical. Just think, make and launch. Your content could be a blog post, an infographic, a video, a flashmob that you film, a Facebook game. Whatever you want.

The team that creates the content with the most hits / likes / retweets wins. In addition, UrgentGenius has "a who's who" (their words) of media folk to appraise the work so even if your creation doesn't win, it could be a "judges favourite." (I'm one of the judges.)

Up for the challenge? Submit your team NOW.

TIMELINE:

Today, Friday March 2 at 6:00 pm in your local time zone the competition begins. You’ve got just 48 hours to create some awesome content.

On Sunday March 4 at 6:00 pm in your local time zone the competition ends and your content needs to be complete and posted.

Between March 4 and March 11 you seed people to react – to tweet, like, link, +1, and other ways - to show people are interested in your creation.

During South-by-Southwest - SXSW - interactive festival I'm speaking on Newsjacking and the UrgentGenius team are involved in several panels. We’ll be talking about the entries from the stage.

On March 11 UrgentGenius tallies the results and declares a global winner

Buzz generated for the winners

The best creations will be included in talks by Urgent Genius founders Jon Burkhart and Grant Hunter at SXSW Saturday March 10 at 11:00
Real-Time Newsjacking & a Cold-Blooded Tweeter

I'll be talking it up at my Newsjacking presentation at SXSW too on Friday March 9 at 2:00
Newsjacking: How to Inject your Ideas

Last years' Urgent Genius Weekender resulted in content featured everywhere from PerezHilton.com to Rolling Stone, the Guardian, Empire and MTV with the best stuff gathering more than 2 million cumulative hits.

Comments

[Jon Burkhart]

Thanks, David. Other judges are from Google Creative Labs, Saatchi and Saatchi, Crispin Porter Bogusky, BBH Labs, Wired UK and even another author who I love Grant McCracken who wrote Chief Culture Officer.

We still need more teams from the USA. The competition starts in 1 hour here in London but you've got 6-9 hours to gather a team across the Pond.

One little note: you can create and seed content any time during the competition. For example, if you think you've got an idea about Justin Bieber turning 18 and becoming a man yesterday and it's simple and do-able, go ahead and get it out there tonight or tomorrow. Don't wait til Sunday.

Bieber was a huge topic last year because on the weekend, he'd just guest starred on CSI and he was also launching his 3D movie. I didn't plan it this way. Just can't seem to shake the Bieb. Here's our top 21 entries from last year if you're curious:

http://urgentgenius.tumblr.com/post/3622940941/top-21-entries-for-urgentgenius-weekender

Enter NOW. You'll either make content that rides the trending wave and creates a meme or you'll have a whole lot of fun trying. Or both. Cheers, Jon

[David Meerman Scott]

Thanks Jon. Looking forward to seeing what comes of this!

[Signalintegrity]

Exciting.. Our entry tries to newsjack a proprietary standard (think Microsoft using Windows API to promote IE and kill off Netscape)

http://circuitsassembly.com/cms/news/12481-mentor-launches-odb-solutions-alliance

Here’s our "second paragraph"

http://signal-integrity.tm.agilent.com/2012/o-is-for/

Let the virality begin… ;-)

[David Meerman Scott]

Go Colin! Fascinating stuff. Keep us posted.

[Elizabeth Chatterton]

We've got our content live - and I registered our team - I'm just not sure where we submit the post itself! Am I missing a step?

Here's the link: http://www.kegworks.com/blog/2012/03/04/is-beer-really-cheaper-than-gas-kegworks-investigates-030412/

[David Meerman Scott]

Elizabeth -- AWESOME INFOGRAPHIC!!! Well done. I look forward to talking it up for you tomorrow when more people are online.

[Signalintegrity]

Score! At 5AM Sunday morning Eastern we garnered an unexpected response from the head of the division we were trying to newsjack. He's based in Europe, so it was ~11AM his time. Don’t know how he found our posting so early on Sunday morning, but he did, so I chalk that one up to a success. Before the posting he didn’t know me from Adam but now he knows I’m on top of the topic! http://signal-integrity.tm.agilent.com/2012/o-is-for/#comments