Today Nissan announced a new online promotion aimed at boosting the believability of its innovation claims: The Nissan Innovation Garage. The mini-campaign invites thinkers, dreamers, engineers and others to submit “everyday ideas,” aimed at inspiring the next great innovation.

Image: NissanInnovationGarage.com

The payoff: two winning ideas, selected by Nissan’s panel of judges, will receive $50,000 grants to be used toward the realization of their concepts. In an interesting bit of trend leveraging, Nissan also promises to “help unleash ideas on Kickstarter.com,” the largest crowdsourced funding platform for creative projects. A brief introductory video explains the campaign.

Trying to “Get Beyond the Claim”

Nissan’s effort is interesting for a major brand with a big presence in the traditional “push marketing” of paid advertising. While they are obviously paying big to create and promote “the garage,” it is a clear effort to get beyond the old model of simply placing product claims in front of consumers (The most innovative Altima ever!) and let the brand’s commitment to innovation speak for itself, pulling consumers in by the self-evident truth of the corporations support of innovators.