Zooppa - Advertising Goes Social

Zooppa is the place where advertising meets Web 2.0. Based in Italy and billed as the first Italian-American Start-Up, Zooppa is a website set up to court User Generated Advertising. Brands short of a marketing campaign can put themselves or their products forward to have adverts created by Zooppa's registered members. The members create speculative adverts that compete to become the brands' marketing campaign. The designers of the winning campaigns get awarded Zoop$, which can be cashed in for real US dollars, and the brands get quality adverts while supporting new marketing talent. The quality control for the ads comes courtesy of the contests: it's the contestants themselves - the ad creators, Zooppa's members - who pick the winners.

With each ad, Zooppa aims to create a viral marketing campaign of cool adverts that are willingly passed on from one person to another by word of mouth. It's the willingness and openness that's important - people don't mind singing the praises of a brand or product, but they hate being duped by marketeers. The danger of viral marketing is that if the public feel they've been fooled, they will turn against the brand, and it's that which Zooppa hopes to address, ensuring that the viewer of the ad is fully aware of what's going on, that they electively pass the ad along because it's so cool they have to tell their friends.

I spoke to a Zooppa Staffer about the Zooppa ethos:

When was Zooppa founded?
- Zooppa was officially born on 1st march 2007 after a period of beta testing in February 2007.

Where is Zooppa based?
- Zooppa is housed by the technological incubator H-Farm. H-Farm is a center for research and innovation located near Venice, that concentrates on the fields of technology and new media.

Where did the idea come from?
- Davide Lombardi had the original idea thinking that everyday people advertise a lot of brands without being paid, for example by wearing them. So, why not to develop a community where everyone can create an ad for a brand and win money? Everyone means a creative professional or a simple lover of advertising and videomaking. Zooppa is a neutral place where brands and users meet each other. Therefore the user is given the opportunity to participate actively in the creative process of advertsing and the brands can obtain a feedback about the users perception.

How many people are involved?
- Zooppa involves a group of 10 persons.

What's the Italian-American connection?
- Zooppa was born in Italy but the goal of the project was to have a global approach, to not been perceived as a local site: we desire, in fact, to involve all the people and the brands in a worldwide market. So we thought that, almost at the beginning, it was strategic to speak a global language.

What plans do you have for Zooppa's future?
- Our plan is to make Zooppa grow in different countries, so there will be a localization of the site and the business, We are planning also a lot of new features, as the podcasting and Zooppa mobile.