Another Orange summer

It's June, festivals are on their way, the Glasto countdown has started, so it must be time to revisit two of the best brand ideas that have been around for a few years. Orange's Spot The Bull broke lots of online/offline boundaries last year, and this year looks like it's after the banner/microsite divide, using 3D (ish) expanding ads to create a very playable version of the game in-banner.
(that's the Flashtalking demo page - I wouldn't normally go to AOL Music, honest)
But some top UX design and Glasto tickets prizes pales compared to Orange's other work this week, which sees the launch of year two of RockCorps. Contagious claim it as a cliche for being too good

"Orange RockCorps represents a tidy fusion of as many new media clichés as you’d care to name. Branded Entertainment? Check. Social networking? Check. Corporate Social responsibility? Check. Essentially a programme encouraging youngsters to put in a couple of hours of community service in exchange for tickets to massive gigs, the real strength of the campaign/platform/whatever is in some phenomenal CRM (check, check, check). Regular yet unobtrusive missives from the RockCorps team promote line-ups and suggest projects with which one might want to get involved....User-generated content as WELL?"

To me though this is more about connecting - how to put a brand in the centre of a network. RockCorps connects people with good causes, it connects music fans with live music, it connects exclusive experiences with charitable donation...it CONNECTS. To quote Henry Jenkins (about the future of marketing generally, rather than specifically about RockCorps)

"it pulls people together and gives them something to do"

And as Contagious mentions, it looks like there is going to be a role for last year's participants to share their experiences to encourage this year's. And given Orange's track record for lighting lots of fires and sticking with the ones that burn, there will probably be more marketing support, more scale, and higher profile bands involved in this one.