Spike Lee: With user-generated content, who needs ad agencies?

Tim Bradshaw:

A boy lies on his back on a boardroom table in a high-rise office block in Toyko. He pulls out his Nokia, takes a photo of the setting sun - upside down - and sends it to his girlfriend in New York, where dawn is breaking. "Now I know we share the same horizon," says the voiceover. "My sunset is your sunrise."

It's a brilliant Nokia ad - the sort of simple, well-executed idea that agencies charge six-figure sums for. Only this one wasn't made by an ad agency - it was made by Hiroki Ono, a 23-year-old film student from Yokohama, Japan, who'd never made an ad before. The film, "Feel the globe", took just two days to make.

Hiroki's 30-second video was the winner of a competition run by Mofilm - a group working with film schools and YouTube addicts to find the best in user-generated content. Mofilm convinced companies such as Visa, HP, Best Buy and AT&T to "put their brands in the hands of consumers", as Nokia's head of brand engagement, Fiona Bosman, put it at yesterday's press conference at the Cannes Lions advertising festival.

Judging this contest was Spike Lee, director of Malcolm X and Inside Man and an enthusiastic supporter of user-generated content and DIY filmmaking.