Last night the Hypercube audition process came to a close, and 50 Canadians received a free Cube from Nissan Canada. I wasn't able to make it to the Toronto event, but watched via Twitter as winners were announced across the country.

Congratulations to the 50 people who won, and I hope those who did not are still feeling good about their participation. If not, I'm curious to hear about it.

Certainly we are hearing from those who's auditions were successful, and they could not be happier.

My friend Kevin Grandia won, in spite of the fact he lives in the suburbs, and wore a suit to the party last night (going straight from his corporate job). Yet Kevin was successful because he demonstrated a number of key qualities, such as creative videos, a sharp website, and effective mobilization of his supporters.

Talking to Kevin this morning it was great to hear his plans for the car. This is where the next phase becomes interesting. Following along with the 50 to see what they're going to do with their new Cubes.

The Hypercube initiative has only just begun and already there's a flurry of activity as people start campaigning for one of the 50 Nissan Cubes. It's still really early, and I suspect only a small fraction of the overall participants have identified themselves. Nonetheless those who have stepped forward have the advantage of a head start, in that this kind of open source marketing is heavily influenced by those involved. Angie Kramer the creative director of this initiative is regularly conversing with participants via twitter about things like holding events in various Canadian cities.

It strikes me when I step back and take a broader look at what's happening that this is similar to the early stages of a reality television show, where you're inviting characters up onto the stage and asking them to demonstrate why they should be part of the fun. The irony of course is that with most shows this part of the process is never aired and takes place entirely behind the scenes. Yet with the hypercube you can pretty much see any and all aspects of how this campaign is taking shape.

For example I've been monitoring the keyword hypercube on twitter search and this allows me to generally follow both the conversation that @thehypercube has with participants but also what other people are saying about the project.

This type of radical transparency is rapidly emerging as the new normal for a lot of campaigns as they abandon attempts to control the conversation and instead hope that the discourse will hold both insights and opportunities to advance the visibility and appeal of the product.

I'm the type of person who has a wide range of interests, and I make a concerted effort to defy stereotype and expectation. For example I've always been interested in transportation, and while I resisted the automotive world for the first three decades of my life, I've lately been fully immersed in car and motorcycle culture. In fact I've been watching so much of the Speed channel that I intend to write a blog post analyzing their programming. In Pizza Pizza locations in Toronto you'll not only be able to see the Tech Trends series I produced, but soon a new series called Motorcycle Minute.

Recently I've been invited to participate in an exciting initiative called the Hypercube which will launch the Nissan Cube in Canada. I'm friends with some of the folk at the agency behind this experiment, Capital C, and they've asked me to observe and analyze what I would characterize as the largest and most comprehensive open source marketing campaign in Canada, maybe even the world.

Rather than spend millions on traditional advertising, Nissan Canada is instead going to give away 50 vehicles to people who they hope will use those vehicles as part of their already creative and somewhat public lives. This type of crowd source marketing on a national and evolving scale is truly impressive, not to mention risky. Yet as a model for open source marketing it demonstrates a courage and vision that I think will be necessary in getting through and even thriving in these volatile times that we're in.

Here I'm defining open source marketing as a process in which a product is introduced and sold to a market without a central command or message, but rather by facilitating a grassroots campaign that is diverse in its voices, culture, and outreach. There's a radical transparency at work here that represents a new approach to selling cars.