The brandgym blog

Are consumer created ads old hat?

Ben has done a review of the latest "create an advert" competition over at Church of the Customer. The list of brands to jump on this bandwagon gets longer by the day and includes Heinz, Southwest Airlines and Doritos (who used it for their last Superbowl ad).

The problem is, what was different and new now feels like its old hat and deja vu. The novelty has worn off, and I'd rather watch a proper ad that is written, directed and produced by people who know what they're doing. And it does seem that the number of people entering these things, which is about 200, means that consumers themselves are not that interested either.

Where consumer-created content does work for me is where there is a natural fit with the brand's idea and personality. The Converse Gallery of short films fits with the creative spirit of the brand, and it strikes me that wearers of the brand have a strong emotional bond with the brand.

And I posted before on Innocent's pinboard which updates every day with new stuff from the brand and its users. Again, there's a good fit with the brand, which has home-made feel and a band of consumers who feel part of the innocent "family", and want to get involved.

I guess now the dust has settled on this new craze, the good old common-sense rules apply: pick a media channel that fits with your brand. The old adage of "the medium is the message" is still true.

innocent's pin board. Lovely

God these guys are good. They do help me keep the faith in branding on my darker days.

Despite becoming seriously big (100 million Euros+ in turnover), innocent manage to stay, well, innnocent. One really nice feature is there brand pinboard.

Rather than this being a static and brand-created piece of content, it updates daily using a feed from the brand's flicker albums, which are populated mainly with user-generated photos. My favourite is the "supergran" album, full of photos of the woolly hats they put on the bottles at Xmas to raise money for charity. Why Supergran? Becuase the little hats are made by an army of little old ladies who live in old peoples' homes!

Any other brands making good use of user-generated content like this?

The $12.79 Superbowl Ad!

Jackie over at the Church of the Customer reports on the bevy of brands who are inviting consumers to help create ads for that most prized of media moments: the Superbowl. This is still one of the most watched events in the world, with 98 million people tuning in last year.

She points out that Chevrolet and the NFL are half-hearted, as they only ask for ideas, and then shoot the films themselves. Doritos on the other hand actually ask for videos from aspiring film-makers and ask people to vote, with the winner being aired. And one of the 5 finalists says on the site that their ad cost the princely sum of $12.79. Which is at least $999 987 and 21 cents less that most of the ads in the Superbowl.

I can see several benefits from the Dorito's approach:

1. There's the obvious saving in production budget

2. You create interest in the brand via the voting that people do, and the film-making

3. The innovative (though getting less so in the USA) approach creates extra buzz around the brand

Most of the examples to date seem to be US based. Any European ones out there?

Consumer created content for beginners

One of the hottest topics in marketing in the US at the moment is "consumer created content". It's yet to hit Europe in a big way yet, but I'm sure it will over the next couple of years. The idea is to open up the brand, inviting people to create their own content. This has several benefits: i) a higher level of brand involvement for those who participate, ii) the content has more "viral" potential, creating valuable brand exposure, iii) it can help the brand come across as more open and innovative, iv) its cheap!

If, like me, you're still learning about this whole area, here are a few examples to give you a flavour of what its all about:

1. Nikon: giving out free cameras to create  photos for their new commercial (thanks to Oliver at The Brand Builder blog for bringing this to my attention)

2. Mentos picked up on a stunt where people dropped Mentos mints into Diet Coke to create an explosive reaction. Their site in the USA focused on this and created a competition for other people to make their own films of Mentos/Diet Coke experiments and post them on video site You Tube.

3. One of the most hyped and extreme examples is B-movie Snakes on a Plane (SOAP for short). A myriad of fan sites were created before the movie opened, and the producers even re-shot part of the film based on fan feedback before it came out.

4. Converse have invited people to make their own adverts and c.1000 people have posted them on Conversegallery.com

If you want a more detailed account of this, the attached presentation is pretty good, from a company called "Collaborative Marketing". They name this phenomenon "open source marketing." Click here to get it:  Download 14.04.OpenSourceMktg.pdf

5-Minute workout: Could your brand benefit from opening up to consumers and inviting them to create their own content for you?