Unilever used crowdsourcing to choose three female bloggers as product spokeswomen for its new advertising campaign for its Vaseline Intensive Rescue skin cream product.

The agency worked with a subcontractor to crawl the Internet for conversations around words like “dry skin,” “lotions” and “skin issues,” and to scan blogs and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook for conversations people were having about those topics.

From there, the ad agency e-mailed a pool of bloggers and conducted interviews with about 75 women until it arrived at the final three bloggers with the most compelling stories.

One of the women, Kari Ellen Aceto from Green Valley Lake, Calif., who reviews products on her blog, A Giveaway Addicted Mommy, was writing about her son’s eczema and her own dry skin when she was contacted by Vaseline.

Ms. Aceto said her dry skin would stop her from participating in outdoor activities and told of once being given a bottle of lotion by a student when she was a physical education teacher.

She plans to chronicle the tour on her blog, and on Facebook and Twitter.

The other bloggers are Kailani Okamoto of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, who writes The Island Life blog, and Michelle Lee of Asheville, N.C., who writes The Adventures of Supermom.

The bloggers were sent samples of the products and will now be compensated spokeswomen for the brand’s Dry Skin Patrol. The group will go on a Vaseline Intensive Rescue Mission Tour to promote the brand objective of one million good skin days.

Are you using crowdsourcing and using customers as product spokespeople for your marketing campaign?

Full story at The New York Times »