Some 1,500 applicants from 60 countries applied and have been whittled down to three, who are now to have an hour in which to pitch to a typical customer of the future. The finalists apparently must show how that customer can use digital and social media and video content; and the winners will receive launch-funding of £100k. The competition is heavily sponsored, and evidently the subject of successful publicity – in, you have guessed it, the advertising industry!

The competition has been launched  by a young advertising agency 

(see http://goo.gl/xlyLL) based at London’s Silicon Roundabout, a totem pole to which innovative businesses have been attracted.

The contest was unveiled by the Prime Minister and featured in the Times, and the progress of the competition can be followed blow by blow on the Times’s website and on Twitter.

The short-listed three are: a pair who ‘grew up with the web’, and met at the Manchester digital-media incubator Hyper-island, off–shoot of a Swedish initiative; an anonymous pair from a leading independent agency, all ready to set up a new agency; and an individual who has already built an innovative agency who believes that the entrepreneurial energy of start-ups is well suited to the fast-changing digital world, and who is seeking to create a business with a small and agile model.

This is an initiative that is using the publicity value itself of all that the ‘accelerator’ offers in an attempt to give a head-start launch to the winner of its competition.

A competition is being run by a start-up to find a new start-up that will itself be ground-breaking in their industry, and will be provided with substantial launch-funding, showered with contacts and mentors/advisers – all in the glare of publicity.