From the Yahoo! Video Team Blog comes news of an interesting promotion sponsored by The Yahoo Time Capsule project.  Students, photographers, videographers, and video bloggers were invited to combine mobile technology and media to snap photos and create short, silent video clips that capture the human experience.  The pictures and videos then became part of the Yahoo Time Capsule.

The challenge was set up scavenger style with teams receiving their clues as to the next destination or subject via cell phone.  According to the blog, they then had between 5 and 20 minutes to find and shoot before more instructions were sent.  The entry points to a lot of the videos and, admittedly, some are quite interesting.

After shooting was done, the group of invited guests received hands-on experience editing and mixing their media using Jumpcut, a Yahoo! owned website dedicated to online video editing and sharing.  They had opportunities to mix media formats to create unique and interesting creations.

Yahoo Video hasn't received the press coverage of YouTube or even Google Video.  The scavenger hunt was specifically targeted at people who would benefit not only from a source of online video, but also from a place to edit and share those videos.  Basically… I think this was a creative and inventive way for Yahoo to raise awareness about it's video services.

Yahoo even has a promotion with Doritos and the NFL that will eventually lead to the airing of user created Doritos commercials during the next SuperBowl.  If that's not effective advertising, I don't know what is!  Everyone wins.  Doritos gets free advertising.  Yahoo gets free advertising.  And when the clip actually airs, the airtime is the only real cost to either Yahoo or Doritos.

Excellent use of user created video for marketing purposes and a creative way to raise awareness of its video service.  Further indicators of a new Yahoo approach?