The next big idea in marketing is out there. That’s the belief driving The Everywhere Initiative, a project in partnership with innovation platform KITE and media company SoulPancake, designed to identify the best new marketing ideas while fostering new relationships within the startup community.
At SXSW 2015, Visa invited startups to try to solve one core challenge: How can brands reach and inspire millennials?
On day two, Visa kicked off the initiative by judging the Everywhere Initiative startup pitch and panel where five startups presented their ideas.
The contenders, Reelio, Gratafy, Ahalogy, Social Rank and LISNR tackled challenges across marketing and ecommerce, but at the end of the day, only one would prevail.
That winner was Reelio, a platform designed to connect YouTube content creators with brands looking for work to use in their campaigns. The resulting marketplace not only makes it easier for creators to support themselves through their work, but for brands to find great content.
For their big idea, Reelio’s reward included $30,000 in funding provided by Visa for demonstrating an innovative way to reach millennials to amplify products such as Visa Checkout, as well as guidance from Visa itself.
“We’re not just providing these companies with financial resources; we’re offering value-added investments through our resources, intellectual property and top internal talent to form mutually beneficial, lasting relationships,” said Shiv Singh, Senior Vice President of Brand and Marketing Transformation at Visa.
More recently, Reelio partnered with Visa to send a YouTube influencer to Cannes—with just one catch—they had to leave the day they were told of the challenge and get there using Visa Checkout.
The Everywhere Initiative isn’t finished just yet. Three more marketing challenges, as outlined by Visa, will have some of today’s best startups trying to solve them in the coming months.
“While there have been lots of startup competitions in the past, this is probably one of the first ones where we’re sharing insights into our consumers, information on our brand and we’re sharing our very specific marketing challenges,” Singh said in a video. “We have serious things to do and we’re hoping the startup community can help us with them.”
