On Monday morning, Gap issued a call on Tumblr for creators to share, through an original piece of content, what “blue” means to them — blue being, of course, the color of Gap’s logo and of its signature product, the blue jean.

The four winning submissions, as determined by Gap, will be distributed through a mobile ad takeover on Tumblr on Aug. 29. On that day, Gap will purchase every single mobile ad Tumblr runs, the first brand to do so. Tumblr began running mobile ads in late April. The company says its mobile userbase is growing rapidly, and is expected to overtake desktop traffic by early 2014, founder and CEO David Karp has said previously.

By targeting Tumblr’s young, share-happy user base, Gap is betting that it can create a new “pop culture moment” on the Internet, Rachel Tipograph, global director of digital and social media at Gap, tells Mashable. “Pop culture doesn’t really start on TV

anymore,” she says. “Pop culture starts on the Internet. When you think about what community is creating pop culture on the Internet, it’s Tumblr. When you think about what community is creating pop culture on the Internet, it’s Tumblr.”

In a way, Gap is using Tumblr as its own creative agency. “We wanted to partner with the best content creators, give them a chance to make the Back to Blue brief, and then take the best pieces of content and turn them into mobile ads,” Tipograph explains. Winners will not be given cash compensation for their work; the compensation is in the exposure, Tipograph says. She declined to say how much Gap is paying for the mobile takeover.

In addition to the Tumblr push, Gap is making the usual buys in print, outdoor, direct and in-store marketing, plus a return to TV for the first time in four years. The apparel giant has also partnered with two dozen “influencers,” including MTV’s Tanisha Long, to create 250 pieces of content to distribute on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Vine and Tumblr over the next three months. A spokesperson for the company describes it as Gap’s “broadest-reaching campaign in the company’s modern history.”

Image: Gap

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The filing also reveals Tumblr CEO and founder David Karp’s compensation package. In addition to the estimated $250 million in cash and $29 million in stock he received for selling Tumblr, he’ll also receive a salary of $10 million a year and an additional $41 million worth of stock if he stays on with the company for four years. (Note that the $41 million is current value of the shares, which could go up or down by the time he receives them.)

In addition, the filing reveals just how strapped for cash Tumblr was by the time it sold to Yahoo. Of the $85 million it raised from investors in September 2011, Tumblr had just $16.5 million left. Tumblr was likely feeling pressure to raise more money, and was no doubt having a hard time during the company’s lackluster ad performance. Yahoo’s offer may have come just in time.

Yahoo’s other acquisitions during this period were comparatively modest. The filing shows that the company paid $54 million in total for nine startups, which, based on their announcement dates, we believe include Summly, Astrid, MileWise, GoPollGo, Loki Studios, PlayerScale, GhostBird Software, Rondee and Bignoggins. (We have reached out to Yahoo to confirm.)

Estimates stated that Yahoo paid around $30 million for Summly, and either that figure was too high, or the other eight startups averaged about $3 million apiece.

Image: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

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