GROUPON x AKB48, SKE48, NMB48. A new election?

AKB48, SKE48 and NMB48 (yes all three!) will be working with GROUPON Japan, a deal-of-the-day website that features discounted gift certificates. The campaign website will open July 9th (tomorrow) at 10:00AM JPT.

GROUPON Japan official website: http://www.groupon.jp/
Campaign website: http://www.groupon.jp/campaign/48/

The concept of this CM is "Everybody picks, everybody makes". For this campaign, the members participating in the CM as well as the theme of the CM will be chosen by the fans in the website. Members from AKB48, SKE48 and NMB48 are available for vote. Not mentioned if that includes the Kenkyuuseis. Number of members has also not been revealed.

There will be 2 rounds of voting. The first round is to choose the members for the CM, and will end on 23 July.
Then several version of the CM will be made and uploaded into the website. The second round is for the fans to choose which of the few CMs will be the one broadcast on TV.

The song that will be used in the CM is Seishun to Kizukanai Mama, the ending theme for AKB48's just ended drama Majisuka Gakuen 2.

So unlike the Senbatsu elections where you have to buy a copy of the Single to vote, in this campaign all you have to do is just click. This makes it fairer to rank the members as (i'm guessing) 1 vote per day, per IP Address. The top 10 is pretty much standard already, question is how many more and which members will be allowed in the CM.