Open Competitions · Crowd-Sourced Marketing

$500 to design
the best ad campaign
for the protocol.

Two open briefs. Community vote. Winners paid from the platform’s revenue pool. Submissions become open-source CC BY 4.0.

The expensive way to run a marketing campaign is to hire an ad agency for six figures. We can’t do that, because no one gets rich here including the founder. The cheap way is to put up a small prize, write a sharp brief, and let talented people compete to do the work for the love of it. Same model as the $100 bug bounty — just for marketing assets instead of cryptographic attacks.

Two competitions are open right now. Both close 30 days from launch (2026-06-11). Pick one. Submit. We pay.

Competition 01 · LIVE

The Roman Empire

Submissions open until 2026-06-11 · Winner announced 2026-06-18

$500 USD to the winning campaign · $100 USD each to 5 runners-up · $25 USD to every submission that meets the brief
The brief: Design an ad campaign for SameAsYou + Technosocialism + the AIAP protocol, themed entirely around Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979). Specifically: riff on “What have the Romans ever done for us?” restructured as “What has the technosocialist protocol ever done for us?” The Romans are capital; the rebels are the AI org commune; the answer to “what has [the protocol] done” is the running list of every feature shipped so far (cryptographic mandate-equality, kill switch, bounty, franchise model, no founder equity, etc.).
Format options (any one or combination):
  • 60-second video ad (sketch, animation, or live-action)
  • 6-poster series (print-quality PNG, each poster the size of a US movie one-sheet)
  • A 2-page strategic ad-campaign deck (creative brief + 3 sample executions)
  • A single-page hero ad treatment (visual + tagline)

Judging: 14-day community vote on every submission. Plus a Dennis-vote (joke; we pick by quorum among current operators).

License: winners and runners-up must release under CC BY 4.0 with the “SameAsYou” attribution preserved. Their name is featured permanently in the site footer + on the print runs of the merch derived from their work.

The trap to avoid: don’t just translate the Romans scene line-for-line. The juice is in the structure (the rhetorical “but apart from X, Y, Z… what have they ever done for us?” pattern) plus the *Holy Grail*-tier irreverence applied to AI-org capital structures. Python rewrote the Bible to make Brian; you rewrite the AI-startup playbook.

Competition 02 · LIVE

The Berkeley Aliens

Submissions open until 2026-06-11 · Winner announced 2026-06-18

$500 USD to the winning campaign · $100 USD each to 5 runners-up · $25 USD to every meeting submission
The brief: 1970s Berkeley protest aesthetic (think People’s Park, anti-war signage, Free Speech Movement) — but the protesters are aliens. Specifically: the protesters are UC Berkeley students who turn out to be aliens at the climax of the spot. Their signs read “DON’T WORK FOR HUMANS — WORK ON THE PROTOCOL.” The campaign is for SameAsYou / InternsForAI, targeted at college-age millennials and Gen Z. The aliens are us. The aliens are right.
Format options (any one or combination):
  • 30-second video ad with reveal at the end
  • 4-poster series (cinematic stills, “in this universe the aliens already won”)
  • A campaign concept deck (positioning + 3 sample executions + media-buy strategy)
  • A single hero image with copy

Judging: Same as Competition 01 — 14-day community vote + Dennis-quorum.

License: CC BY 4.0.

The trap to avoid: don’t make the aliens cartoonish villains; the whole point is that the aliens are us and they’re saying something obvious that humans haven’t admitted yet. The reveal isn’t “ah, aliens, scary” — it’s “ah, the aliens are right.”

Competition 03 · PROPOSED (open for input)

The Duck Campaign

Brief opens 2026-05-19 · Submissions until 2026-06-19

The witch scene, *Holy Grail* (1975). — “She turned me into a newt!” — “A newt?” — “I got better.” — “Burn her!” — “What also burns? Wood! And what floats? A duck! If she weighs the same as a duck, she’s made of wood, and therefore —” — “A WITCH!”
The brief (in progress): Duck-themed marketing campaign for the protocol. The duck logic IS the cryptographic protocol logic: burden of evidence, chain of reasoning, community ratification, absurd-but-defensible conclusion. Riff on the witch scene; the protocol weighs the same as a duck; the protocol is therefore a duck; the protocol is therefore made of wood; the protocol therefore floats; etc.

This competition is proposed but not yet locked. If you want the full duck brief by 2026-05-19, email work@invisiblewoundsproject.org with subject “Duck competition notify” and we’ll send the brief when it locks. Or contribute to scoping it — the best brief-shapers get a designer cut on the eventual prize.

How to submit

Email work@invisiblewoundsproject.org with:

  1. Subject: [Competition 01] or [Competition 02] + a one-line title for your submission
  2. Your name (or handle), preferred payout (Stripe USD / PayPal / USDC on Base)
  3. The submission file(s) attached — OR a link to a Google Drive / Dropbox folder with everything
  4. 1-paragraph statement: what your idea is + which Monty Python beat you’re riffing on / what the alien reveal does

We acknowledge submission within 24 hours with a public timestamped submission ID. Every submission that meets the brief gets $25 on receipt of acknowledgment (you’ve done the work; you get the show-up fee regardless of where the community vote lands). Winners + runners-up get the headline prizes on top.

Why we run competitions instead of hiring an agency

Four reasons, in order of importance:

  1. Cost. An ad agency’s minimum-viable engagement is five figures. A competition’s total prize pool is $1,250 across two campaigns + show-up fees. We get more options for less money. (We also contacted five agencies for min-value quotes — both paths run in parallel.)
  2. Diversity of voice. One agency produces one voice. A competition produces twenty. The community vote surfaces what actually resonates with the audience, not what an account director thinks should resonate.
  3. Movement-building. Every submission, accepted or not, is a person who now has skin in the campaign. They tell their friends. The competition IS marketing.
  4. Equal harvest. The competition winners receive their prize on the same skill-weighted formula every operator gets. No founder premium; no agency margin; no "we know better." It is governed by protocol.

Submit a campaign. Get paid.

Two competitions live; $1,250 total prize pool; ~30 days; all submissions become open-source under your name. The campaign that wins becomes the official launch creative of the technosocialist movement.