However, with the increased focus on ensuring ROI and beating the competition has come an increased level of creativity - an essential element in ensuring that all important stand out in an increasingly hungry market. Whilst there have been marginally more cost effective opportunities across the traditional media landscape, as media owners in turn scrap for the last few pennies, it is the digital world that has provided the lifeline; an opportunity for brands and agencies not just to stay afloat, but to prosper. Whilst the online world is in no way nothing new, the opportunities and technological advancement that it continues to present are. The trump card is that they are no longer the preserve of big business, they are a potential land of plenty for all.

A perfect example of this principle is the “Awesome Philippines” partnership between MTV Asia and the Philippines Department of Tourism, culminating in the “Remix Your Holiday” campaign, geared towards increasing awareness of young, international music fans and travellers from the UK, Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, the United States and domestically within the Philippines. As the tourism industry continues to look for new and exciting ways to attract visitors to not only their geographic locations, but also their digital destinations, social media continues to play an integral part of the campaign program.

The MTV Asia and Philippines Department of Tourism campaign marked a first-of-it’s-kind strategy to attract young adults to the Philippines. Unlike other travel and tourism campaigns, MTV Asia and the Philippines Department of Tourism took the unique approach to lead the campaign with a social media promotion that launched nearly a month prior to the traditional TV and print media campaign buys – a sign perhaps, of economically inspired creativity.

The campaign utilises the white-label Reality Digital Opus social media platform as its backend technology (with integrated Adobe Premiere Express Service) to power a video remix contest for a worldwide audience in multiple languages. Visitors to the “Awesome Philippines” site can create and share their own remixed videos of popular Philippines travel spots, using stock footage of the country’s top tourist attractions, provided by MTV.

The importance of utilising stock footage and video remixes to advertisers and agencies should not be understated. The ability of users to interact and create bespoke creative goes straight to the heart of UGC, ensuring users have the freedom that they crave. However, the stock footage provides the safety net for brand advertisers, ensuring that the final product is brand safe; a key bridge of moderation between user and advertiser requirements that was highlighted recently in a wide reaching Reality Digital survey.

The survey of senior executives from leading agencies, brands and publishers identified the widespread response that moderated user-generated content will grow more rapidly than other forms of advertising in 2009. Almost one in two respondents (48.1%) suggested that user-generated video which is moderated – and therefore an appropriate brand-safe vehicle for advertising – is likely to experience the most significant growth of the digital sector in 2009. Significantly, 93% of the survey’s respondents indicated that they believe un-moderated user-generated content to be a potential brand threat, with only 7.5% of respondents regarding un-moderated content as always being brand safe for advertising. Fairly telling statistics regardless of the current economic climate.

Having established the necessity of providing a brand-safe environment, in addition to powering the site’s video and social networking features. Reality Digital’s social media platform includes multi-language localization in English and Asian languages (Japanese, Korean, and Traditional & Simplified Chinese) to support the campaign’s global audiences. User location is automatically detected and visitors are presented with the appropriate language, and landing page to match their specific location. Users can easily switch the site language based on personal preference, at anytime with one click of the mouse. Using social media (and platforms such as Reality Digital Opus) in this way will allow brands to effectively produce targeted online communities that meet the demands of the global trend towards social media adoption and multi-cultural, multi-language, unified communication.

The “Remix Your Holiday” competition will be promoted through on-air VJ vignettes on MTV stations around the world and is offered in five different languages. At the conclusion of the “Remix Your Holiday” competition, eleven winners, one from each country (and accompanying guest) will win the perfect holiday in the Philippines.

It is providing these opportunities that technology providers can be rightly proud (and perhaps a contributory reason behind Red Herring announcing Reality Digital has been awarded a place on the Red Herring North America 100 list, an accolade awarded to the 100 most promising technology companies in the US). However, without brands such as MTV and The Philippines Department of Tourism, and without the sanity check enforced by the recession, perhaps consumers would have to wait a little longer to realise their dreams. Every cloud and all that…