Patent Publication Number: US-2012047026-A1

Title: System and Method for Recruiting, Analyzing and Promoting Creative Submission

Description:
PRIORITY AND RELATED APPLICATIONS 
     This application claims the benefit of Provisional U.S. Patent Application No. 61/372,180 filed on Aug. 10, 2010. The details of application No. 61/372,180 are incorporated by reference into the present application in its entirety. 
    
    
     FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
     Aspects of the present invention relate to the use of crowd-sourcing techniques to distribute, recruit, analyze and promote creative concepts and submissions. More specifically, aspects of the present invention relate to the use of one or more social networking platforms, or other client interface portals, to distribute, refine, channel and select a creative submission while maintaining the ability to coordinate through an administrative or other professional review consultant. 
     BACKGROUND 
     Creative departments, advertising agencies, and other groups have long utilized in-house employees and other traditional employment arrangements to develop and prepare branding strategies, advertisement copy, and other creative works (“Projects”) for a particular client. Competition for jobs at such firms is high, and it is often difficult for a part-time or otherwise burgeoning artist to get his works noticed or even considered for any type of large scale campaign. To date there has not been an effective system in place for soliciting from a large audience (“the crowd”) proposals for creative works such as those described above. 
     In addition, brand-centric companies have not in the past been able to collaborate with a professional services firm while also taking advantage of the high volume traffic and other fan-enabled services created by the world of social networking that provide an enabling function to integrate crowd participation, agency review and partner interaction with the selection and solicitation of creative concepts and other elements. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     In one embodiment, various aspects of a particular project are displayed for the public at large to review and submit a proposed concept through an electronic interface such as a web portal or other on-line system. 
     In one embodiment, aspects of a proposed Project or proposal are displayed for the artists (users) in a creative brief that includes, for example, details concerning the proposed brand context, the overall objective for the branding effort, the cultural context of the project, a strategy about the brand, and various metrics that may be utilized to evaluate the submissions. 
     In accordance with one embodiment, a cross-service development and distribution system for presenting a creative brief to a user comprises at least one instance of a server based fan machine, the fan machine comprising a database structure and an interface between the database structure and a social network platform, at least one instance of a server based agency machine, the agency machine comprising a database structure and an interface between the agency machine database structure and the fan machine database structure, and a partner dashboard, the partner dashboard comprising a database structure and an interface between the partner dashboard database structure and the fan machine database structure and an interface between the partner dashboard database structure and the agency machine database structure. Accordance with some aspects the interface between the partner dashboard database structure and the fan machine database structure is initiated through the fan machine by an authorization command sent from the agency machine. 
     In accordance with another aspect, a method for creative development and distribution comprises creating a brief that defines a project, enabling access to the project on a social network platform through a fan machine platform, soliciting a plurality of ideas and concepts from a community of users through the fan machine platform, screening the plurality ideas and concepts through an agency platform and filtering out unwanted material from the plurality of submitted ideas, providing an interface for community voting on at least one of the submitted ideas, enabling a third party to edit and comment on at least one of the submitted ideas, and selecting one or more of the submitted ideas. Other embodiments and aspects will become apparent after reading the detailed description provided herein. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
       Various objects and advantages and a more complete understanding of the present invention are apparent and more readily appreciated by reference to the following detailed description and to the appended claims when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings wherein: 
         FIG. 1  is an architectural diagram showing a cross-service integration of the various systems used in connection with aspects of the present invention; 
         FIG. 2  is a flow chart showing one embodiment of a cross-service development and distribution system in accordance with aspects of the present invention; 
         FIG. 3  is a detailed architectural diagram showing a cross-service integration of the various systems used in connection with aspects of the present invention; 
         FIG. 4  is a machine implemented component architecture that may be used in connection with aspects of the present invention; and 
         FIGS. 5 and 6  are embodiments of application program interfaces that may be utilized in connection with aspects of a system constructed in accordance with the present invention. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     Aspects of this invention relate to systems and methods that enable a company to solicit, supervise, evaluate, award, and promote creative submissions from a large number of independent or otherwise unrepresented artists and authors. Aspects of the invention also relate to the use of a distributed network to administer, control, review and select a creative concept from a large group of individuals while maintaining the ability to selectively engage a professional pool of consultants to help evaluate and fine tune the creative submissions. 
     With reference to  FIG. 1 , a cross-service development and distribution system architecture  100  is shown. In an embodiment, various services are integrated into the overall system architecture  100  generally including a “fan machine” service  110 , a “partner dashboard”  130 , an “agency machine”  150  and in some embodiments an “auxiliary service”  170 . In one embodiment each of the fan machine service  110 , partner dashboard  130 , agency machine  150  and auxiliary service  170  are hosted or otherwise managed on remote servers or other web application services such as for example, an Amazon Web Service. Alternatively, these components may be locally hosted by an individual company or client. Each are interconnected as described herein through a network connection, wide area network or web-based cloud computing interface. As described below, each of the fan machine service  110 , the partner dashboard  130  the agency machine  150  and the auxiliary service  170  comprise various computer hardware components such as server systems, database structures, input and output devices and other peripheral hardware that enable the system machine to operate as an interconnected network of facilities. Cloud or network  200  is shown as one example of the system  100  being implemented across a distributed network such as the internet. It should be understood that each of the individual components in the system  100  may be located at various places throughout the network  200 . 
     Fan machine service  110  is in one embodiment a user interface that provides a program interface that allows an individual the ability to receive, view and respond to various requests for creative submissions initiated by a company or other client. The fan machine  110  includes in one embodiment a fan machine master database  112 , one or more fan machines  114   a - 114   d  and a network load balancer  116 . One or more databases may be implemented in various embodiments. Fan machines  114   a - 114   d  are representative of any number of available fan machines distributed throughout the system and it should be understood that when the term “fan machine” is used herein applicant is inherently referring to one or more of such elements. The same applies to the agency machine and partner dashboard elements described herein. 
     A fan machine is in one embodiment an instance of a local service or other computer program running locally or in connection with a social networking platform. In one preferred embodiment, a fan machine is a program interface running on a customer promotional web page, such as a Facebook fan page, although any known or similar functioning social network platform is contemplated to function with aspect of the inventions described herein. 
     In one embodiment, each instance of the fan machine  114   a - 114   d  is unique to a particular client or user and comprises a simple interface that allows a user to transmit an idea (e.g. videos, images, written information, etc.) to a place where the idea can undergo more substantive review. Through one or more the fan machines  114   a - 114   d  users can submit their ideas through an existing community of users such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, etc. Broadly speaking, each instance of a fan machine provides a mechanism for any user in a particular community to submit thoughts, ideas or other creative information to be considered or evaluated by an organization or other professional association. In one embodiment (described further below) submissions taken through one or more of the fan machines are sent to an Agency Machine for further review, filtering and evaluation. 
     Each instance of a fan machine can be implemented as a platform specific application, e.g. a robust Facebook specific application that is linked into the Facebook page by a particular client, user or outside advertising agency. Instances of fan machines can also be implemented into other social networking platforms such as twitter or LinkedIn, although they might not be as robust as one implemented through a platform such as Facebook. Other embodiments include the Instagram or YouTube social platform for video or picture submissions. 
     Partner Dashboard  130  comprises dashboard master database  132 , one or more instances of an ad machine  134   a  and  134   b  and a network load balancer  136 . The partner dashboard  130  is in a preferred embodiment a client hub of data and also provides analytics to look at such metrics as the number of fans working on assignments, who are the top fans contributing ideas, forecasting with regard to specific campaigns underway, etc. The partner dashboard  130  sits in the network  200  between agency machine service  150  and fan machine service  110 . In another embodiment, the partner dashboard provides an operational interface for users of the agency machine service  150  to link into a particular client&#39;s operations in order to provide in-depth review and analysis of advertising and marketing operations and campaigns, or otherwise provide real-time feedback into similar business efforts. In other embodiments, the partner dashboard provides analytical tools for a client or brand owner to view its brand performance across a spectrum of social network facilities. With ad machines deployed on a variety of social media platforms, the partner dashboard allows a client to view and monitor performance across all of the fan machine instances. 
     With continuing reference to  FIG. 1 , agency machine service  150  is provided as an intermediary communication module between fan machine service  110  and partner dashboard  130 . The agency machine service  150  includes one or more agency machines  154   a  and  154   b , an agency machine database  156  and a network load balancer  152 . The agency machine service  150  provides the crux of communication capabilities with the one or more fan machines  114   a - 114   d  that are active in the network. The agency machines service  150  provides a professional level interface for the moderation and review to the potential mass of information submitted through the one or more fan machines. Because the cross-service development and distribution system  100  allows the submission of ideas and data through existing social networks, the potential for unwanted or inappropriate information being submitted is very high. Agency machine service  150  provides the ability to filter for unwanted or inappropriate information such as profanity, pornography, or otherwise inappropriate or unwanted information. Agency machine service  150  also provides a sophisticated interface for professional level substantive review of the submission provided through the one or more fan machines  114   a - 114   d . Agency machine service  150  allows any “junk” submissions to be culled out before getting passed to the primary client for review. Automatic filters or flags may be implemented within the operational system of agency machine system  150  to only allow the important submissions to make it to later rounds of review and processing. Flags may be assigned within agency machine service  150  to identify high quality submissions and those flags or other markers may be passed along with the creative submission back to the client or back to the ad machines that originally posted the project (“brief”) for solicitation of ideas. If initiated through a social network such as Facebook, those or flags may be associated with the particular user of the social network so that others within the network may see the performance and/or success level of the creative user. 
     In other embodiments an auxiliary service  170  may be included in order to provide peripheral services to the cross-service development and distribution system  100  and more particularly to the users of the agency machine service  150 . Auxiliary service  170  may include such features and systems as a messaging broker  172 , a search service  174  and/or an email service  176 . Messaging broker may be a text based SMS system or other short form messaging system for alerting users of the system to one or more milestones, events or other aspect of the system process. Search service  174  may be any know web-enabled search mechanisms for retrieving or research information. Emailer service  176  is any known email system client such as Gmail, Outlook, or their equivalent. 
     Implementation and Process Example 
     In accordance with one embodiment, the preparation of a creative request (sometimes referred to as a “brief”), the solicitation of submissions and the eventual selection of a “winning” brief happen as follows in the context of the cross-service development and distribution system  100 . 
     In one embodiment and example, a branded company (e.g. Harley Davidson, Coca Cola, Nike, etc.) initiates an advertising or marketing campaign. Such a campaign may be comprised of something as simple as the format of a new logo or slogan or may be as complex as the development of a new line of products or services. In either case, the company prepares a set of specifications or another written request that defines the specific parameters of the project. This request is referred to herein as a “brief.” In one scenario, the company already has a product or company fan page existing on a social networking site such as Facebook and preferably already has a number of existing fans of the company associated with that social networking platform. Fans of a particular company will automatically receive notices or other offers generated by the company and will be notified when the company posts its advertising or marketing brief on the Facebook page. Alternatively, someone who is not yet a fan of the company may receive the company&#39;s brief posting via a recommendation from one of their friends or the brief posting is forwarded to them from a system outside of Facebook. 
     In one embodiment, the company indicates, via its fan page, that the company is soliciting ideas for a new logo or other advertising collateral that the company wants to develop. The fan page indication includes a link that will take a particular fan to the company fan page and into a specific application (e.g. one of the fan machines  114   a - 114   d ) where a more complete description of the brief resides. This description may include instructions for the layout, style or formatting requirements, templates for the fan to use, etc. The fan can then work offline to create a idea in line with the requirements set forth in the brief and then upload the completed submission back into the fan machine service  110  through a fan machine application (in this case, resident on Facebook). 
     After submission, the uploaded submission gets sent through an API to the agency machine service  150  which provides a professional community of users the ability to review or otherwise analyze the submission. One or more users in the agency machine professional community may then review the submissions and can provide an initial rank and/or review indications through the agency machine service. These may be accomplished via simple radio buttons incorporated into the agency machine service or any other mechanism for flagging or otherwise segregating the submissions. The user on the agency machine service  150  may also have the ability to assign additional moderation feedback for this first level review (e.g. yes, no, profanity, block, high level, high pick, etc.). After the first level review the submission may be distributed back to the fan machine service  110  with the appropriate notation or status flag. 
     The fan machine service  110  in one embodiment may provide aspects relating to a particular brief or user to a leader board or other ranking mechanism. In this sense the more effective or talented users may be publically identified. The leader board is in one embodiment presented on the specific company fan page within Facebook but may also be presented in a more broad facing environment. The leader board may be specific for a given brief or project or may be formatted for a user&#39;s overall performance throughout the history of the fan&#39;s online career. 
     In another embodiment, the fan machine service  110  may also include a voting system in connection with the brands and that gets presented to the company&#39;s fan base at large. The selection of submissions that get presented to the overall fan base may be randomly generated or selected by the company or brand owner. Fans may be presented with the opportunity to either vote yes/no, positive/negative, etc. Due to the inherent Facebook functionality, an individual fan has ability to share a submission or brief with other fans or personal friends. 
     At some point after the submission process through the one or more fan machines  114   a - 114   d , the company or brand owner is in a position to select one or more of the submitted ideas as the “winner.” This may take place while considering the rankings posted on the social network fan page after voting by fans or may be made independently by the company. In one embodiment, the leaderboard is just a suggestion to the company (e.g. “here is what your fans think”), and the final selection is still a manual process executed by the company, with possible contribution by a resource generated through the agency machine platform. In line with the brief posted by the company, the company can associate a prize with each brief which can range from a novelty item to a substantial cash payment. 
     Through the partner dashboard  170  a client can install a particular fan machine application for use in its marketing and advertising campaign. In one embodiment, an authorization to use the fan machine service  110  needs to be initiated in order to allow the company or client to enable the system. License keys, tokens or other authorization schemes may be granted to the company by the owner of the cross-service development and distribution  100  to initiate the fan machine for use. 
     In one embodiment, the fan machine service  110  is server based and resides at a server location remote from the social network such as on an Amazon Web Service platform. Once a client is authorized to use a particular embodiment of a fan machine they will be authorized to access an administrative dashboard on the partner dashboard  130  in order to run the fan machine system  110 . The partner dashboard  130  provides the ability to do one or more of creating briefs, distributing briefs, reviewing submissions, etc. 
     One or more forms of direct marketing efforts may be utilized to direct the brief via partner dashboard to a specific demographic of users or fans. For example, a project that involves the creation of a new motorcycle for women between the ages of 19-25 can be directed to the appropriate demographic of fans and only a specifically selected set of fans will be enabled to view the brief on Facebook. 
     As mentioned above, brief creation and management is accomplished within the partner dashboard  130  and the partner dashboard  130  includes administrative functions for brief creation and administration. In addition, the Agency machine  150  may provide an outside agency or consultant an access panel into the client dashboard so that additional marketing consultation may occur in connection with the company&#39;s brand management or overall marketing strategy. In this sense, the agency machine provides a platform for providing information to the company as to what gaps may exist in a marketing campaign or strategy and allows the outside consultant to assist in normalizing any spikes and dips within a brand campaign. Data is pulled in from the partner dashboard and then the user of the agency platform can provide consulting information as to where the company should be directing their marketing. In other embodiments, the partner dashboard provides a reporting interface into all of the social media platforms utilized by the company to determine who is contributing and which platforms are being the most effective. In this sense, the partner dashboard may provide information feeds from each of the fan machines utilized by a client for a particular brand campaign or other project. The partner dashboard may also include operational instances of report publishing with refined analytics and reports based on this data including preformed templates or other reporting tools. 
     As used above, the overall cross-service development and distribution system  100  may include one or more physical devices and networked hardware to effect the operation of the system or application. For instance, each of the database structures  112 ,  132  and  156  may be standalone units or may comprise a common database that is shared amongst several clients. Depending on the size and complexity, one or more clients may receive a dedicated database. Each of the fan machine&#39;s  114   a - 114   d  are preferably implemented as individual web applications or servers. As with the database structures, these may also be shared or dedicated environments. The load balancers  116 ,  136  and  152  are routing mechanisms to split up load appropriately and to send data to the proper server. 
     While the agency machine service  150  has a generally similar system architecture to the fan machine service  110 , the agency machine service  150  also includes an API that allows connections into the user accounts and workflow tools for monitoring and maintenance/distribution of tasks (e.g. look at a particular submission). 
     With further reference to  FIG. 1 , the various data paths and interconnections show how information is moved and processed within the overall cross-service development and distribution system  100  and how the different components are interconnected with each other. For instance, the fan machine service  110  and the agency machine service  150  allow functions such as creating and updating a brief, creating an idea and approving an idea to be shared between the two services. 
     In accordance with one particular embodiment, when a fan creates a submission through a fan machine, it is transmitted to the agency machine system  150  in real time for someone to substantively review. After review, the submission can get pushed back to the fan machine resident on a Facebook page and posted to a leader board. Through the partner dashboard the client has a view of every idea submitted. It is then up to the client which one of the submissions to select. The winning author or artist gets contacted and is awarded for his success. 
     Referring now to  FIG. 2 , a process flow is shown that represents one embodiment of a method  300  of implementing a cross-service development and distribution system  100 . In one embodiment, a group of Facebook or other social networking fans  302  is distributed or presented with a brief or other specification  304  about a particular project that a client or company desires to implement and solicit ideas for. Briefs are generated directed on the fan machine platform or can also be generated in an off line environment  306  where they are subsequently published to the fan machine resident on the Facebook platform. At  308  fans review the brief and submit ideas in response thereto. As ideas are submitted, they are published and transmitted in real time to an agency machine at  310  where they are either accepted at  312  or rejected at  314 . Rejected submissions are archived at  316 . Accepted submissions are sent to the fan machine resident on a Facebook platform for potential voting at  318  with commenting and sharing also available at  320 . Fan feedback as to the top choices is accomplished at  322  and this information is shared with the company at  324  where the company makes the ultimate decision as to which submission is the best. In one embodiment, one or more of the top ideas  326  and ideas are sent back  328  to the agency machine at  330  where an outside consultant can contribute, refine or otherwise modify the end-result submissions for final presentation to the company. 
     With reference to  FIG. 3 , a higher resolution image of third party integration into the fan machine architecture is shown. As with  FIG. 1 ,  FIG. 3  shows representations of the fan machine service  110 , partner dashboard  130  and agency machine service  150 . Fan machine service  110  in one embodiment sits or resides as an application on a social network or other communication platform such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram. Depending on the particular desire of a client or company, the choice of social platform will vary. For example, a logo, t-shirt, banner ad campaign, etc. would be more conducive to a Facebook platform, while the submission of a generalized idea or image might be better suited for a campaign built upon a twitter platform. Similarly, a viral video or television campaign would be suited for a YouTube platform to host the ad machine while Instagram might be better suited for images and photograph submissions. Aspects of the present invention allow the instances of the fan machine, agency machine and partner dashboard are layered over the particular business model of the client and allows solicitation, review, modification and promotion of a brand campaign under a single integrated system. 
     The fan machine service  110  supports various functions such as a partner fan page, the ability to view current briefs or specifications, the ability to submit user-generated content to a brief, provisions for voting on a particular brief or user, production and display of a leader board, and overall brief administration. 
     Agency machine service  150  supports various functions such as fan machine moderation, outside campaign curation and ideation, private network brief curation, a user ranking system, the ability to provide brief creation and editing, and an analytics engine. 
     Partner dashboard  130  support various functions such as an analytics engine, which itself may comprise analytics for one or more social media platforms and the ability to analyze a brief itself. The partner dashboard may also provide brief creation and editing capabilities, administrative functions such as new partner signup features and software license administration, a billing interface and various other administration features such as private network administration, creation and editing of networks and user account maintenance. 
     Interrelation of the various platforms and functions are shown in  FIG. 3  via arrows. For instance, the partner dashboard analytics engine is tied to the analytics engine built into the agency machine and the brief creation and edits capabilities are linked across the fan machine platform  110 , the agency machine  150  and the partner dashboard  130 . 
     Rank Engine 
     Aspects of the invention also include a rank engine that comprises a data collection and analysis framework. This engine powers insights about users, projects, and clients in the agency machine. The rank engine is an extremely flexible toolkit that allows us to easily glean insights from system metrics and admin-generated tags in order to understand, for example, who the most valuable community members are (General Rank), as well as more specific queries such as “who are the best people for ‘edgy tv writing’.” 
     In accordance with one embodiment, the rank engine has two basic metric types: system metrics and admin-assigned tags. Both system metrics and tags are in one form key/value pairs, which can be used for rank or other queries. Each of these key/value pairs will be referred to as a ‘metric.’ System metrics may include information such as:
         Avg. number of ideas contributed per project   Total number of ideas submitted   Percent of public briefs read   Percent of public briefs accepted   Number of ideas designated as ‘Yes’   Number of ideas designated as ‘No’       

     Admin-assigned metrics provide additional meta-data that is useful to characterizing and ranking users, such as:
         “Good Writing”+2   “Good Attitude”+3   “Quality Comps”+1   “Edgy”+7       

     In order to statistically summarize the community of users, an administrator creates a Rank Schema. The Rank Schema is essentially a list of metric names along with a weight (or multiplier). Schema are designed for a specific purpose. So, for example, if you only wanted to the best folks for “edgy tv writing,” you would only include the metrics that are useful for describing just that. 
     To generate a Rank Score, the schema is run against each user&#39;s scorecard—where each schema entry is multiplied by the corresponding user metric—and then the weighted numbers are summed to produce an overall score for each user for that schema. The scores for a schema are then organized into a histogram in order to understand the relative rank of each user for that given schema. General Rank is preferably one of these schema that includes many of the system and admin-assigned metrics. 
     Aspects of the cross-service development and distribution system may also include the following functions and capabilities:
         1. Areas for users to upload images and other graphic representations of their work;   2. Account creation modules for tracking and maintaining artistic submissions as well as user account information and personal data, including email and contact information, login credentials, professional credentials and resume information, specialties and preferences for additional work;   3. A communications module for communicating with and being monitored and managed by the system moderator, manager or director and for posting and receiving messages;   4. Capabilities that allow for easy matching of users to customers based on user&#39;s level of experience and types of expertise, ranking of each user relative to their peers, ability to form a team of multiple users and associated team-based collaboration tools.       

       FIGS. 5 and 6  show various application program interfaces that may be used in connection with aspects of the present invention such as a brief page interface ( FIG. 5 ) and a partner dashboard page interface ( FIG. 6 ). 
     In addition,  FIG. 4  shows a diagrammatic representation of one embodiment of a machine in the exemplary form of a computer system  900  within which a set of instructions for causing a device to perform any one or more of the aspects and/or methodologies of the present disclosure to be executed. Either of the fan machine system  110 , the agency machine system  150 , the partner dashboard  130  or the auxiliary service  170  may be implemented in accordance with the hardware and machine descriptions set forth herein. 
     Computer system  900  includes a processor  905  and a memory  910  that communicate with each other, and with other components, via a bus  915 . Bus  915  may include any of several types of bus structures including, but not limited to, a memory bus, a memory controller, a peripheral bus, a local bus, and any combinations thereof, using any of a variety of bus architectures. 
     Memory  910  may include various components (e.g., machine readable media) including, but not limited to, a random access memory component (e.g., a static RAM “SRAM”, a dynamic RAM “DRAM, etc.), a read only component, and any combinations thereof. In one example, a basic input/output system  920  (BIOS), including basic routines that help to transfer information between elements within computer system  900 , such as during start-up, may be stored in memory  910 . Memory  910  may also include (e.g., stored on one or more machine-readable media) instructions (e.g., software)  925  embodying any one or more of the aspects and/or methodologies of the present disclosure. In another example, memory  910  may further include any number of program modules including, but not limited to, an operating system, one or more application programs, other program modules, program data, and any combinations thereof. 
     Computer system  900  may also include a storage device  930 . Examples of a storage device (e.g., storage device  930 ) include, but are not limited to, a hard disk drive for reading from and/or writing to a hard disk, a magnetic disk drive for reading from and/or writing to a removable magnetic disk, an optical disk drive for reading from and/or writing to an optical media (e.g., a CD, a DVD, etc.), a solid-state memory device, and any combinations thereof. Storage device  930  may be connected to bus  915  by an appropriate interface (not shown). Example interfaces include, but are not limited to, SCSI, advanced technology attachment (ATA), serial ATA, universal serial bus (USB), IEEE 1394 (FIREWIRE), and any combinations thereof. In one example, storage device  930  may be removably interfaced with computer system  900  (e.g., via an external port connector (not shown)). Particularly, storage device  930  and an associated machine-readable medium  935  may provide nonvolatile and/or volatile storage of machine-readable instructions, data structures, program modules, and/or other data for computer system  900 . In one example, software  925  may reside, completely or partially, within machine-readable medium  935 . In another example, software  925  may reside, completely or partially, within processor  905 . Computer system  900  may also include an input device  940 . In one example, a user of computer system  900  may enter commands and/or other information into computer system  900  via input device  940 . Examples of an input device  940  include, but are not limited to, an alpha-numeric input device (e.g., a keyboard), a pointing device, a joystick, a gamepad, an audio input device (e.g., a microphone, a voice response system, etc.), a cursor control device (e.g., a mouse), a touchpad, an optical scanner, a video capture device (e.g., a still camera, a video camera), touchscreen, and any combinations thereof. Input device  940  may be interfaced to bus  915  via any of a variety of interfaces (not shown) including, but not limited to, a serial interface, a parallel interface, a game port, a USB interface, a FIREWIRE interface, a direct interface to bus  915 , and any combinations thereof. 
     A user may also input commands and/or other information to computer system  900  via storage device  930  (e.g., a removable disk drive, a flash drive, etc.) and/or a network interface device  945 . A network interface device, such as network interface device  945  may be utilized for connecting computer system  900  to one or more of a variety of networks, such as network  950 , and one or more remote devices  955  connected thereto. Examples of a network interface device include, but are not limited to, a network interface card, a modem, and any combination thereof. Examples of a network or network segment include, but are not limited to, a wide area network (e.g., the Internet, an enterprise network), a local area network (e.g., a network associated with an office, a building, a campus or other relatively small geographic space), a telephone network, a direct connection between two computing devices, and any combinations thereof. A network, such as network  950 , may employ a wired and/or a wireless mode of communication. In general, any network topology may be used. Information (e.g., data, software  925 , etc.) may be communicated to and/or from computer system  900  via network interface device  945 . 
     Computer system  900  may further include a video display adapter  960  for communicating a displayable image to a display device, such as display device  965 . A display device may be utilized to display any number and/or variety of indicators related to pollution impact and/or pollution offset attributable to a consumer, as discussed above. Examples of a display device include, but are not limited to, a liquid crystal display (LCD), a cathode ray tube (CRT), a plasma display, and any combinations thereof. In addition to a display device, a computer system  900  may include one or more other peripheral output devices including, but not limited to, an audio speaker, a printer, and any combinations thereof. Such peripheral output devices may be connected to bus  915  via a peripheral interface  970 . Examples of a peripheral interface include, but are not limited to, a serial port, a USB connection, a FIREWIRE connection, a parallel connection, and any combinations thereof. In one example an audio device may provide audio related to data of computer system  900  (e.g., data representing an indicator related to pollution impact and/or pollution offset attributable to a consumer). 
     A digitizer (not shown) and an accompanying stylus, if needed, may be included in order to digitally capture freehand input. A pen digitizer may be separately configured or coextensive with a display area of display device  965 . Accordingly, a digitizer may be integrated with display device  965 , or may exist as a separate device overlaying or otherwise appended to display device  965 . 
     Other aspects of a system and method constructed in accordance with the description provided herein will be known to those of skill in the art.