Blogs, podcasts, video, online photo albums, social networks, do-it-yourself ad campaigns. Increasingly people are creating more content than "mainstream media" companies. Consumers are creating ads, editing existing ones and proliferating them over YouTube and other sharing services. People are gaining more control over content and even how a company's brand is perceived. Is this a good thing? Is it a fad? Can is be managed? Should it be managed? Should brands allow consumers to "co-op" their brand? Should everything be a "conversation"? Should we completely say goodbye to traditional, top-down brand management? Are brands jumping on the social/conversational bandwagon because they believe in it, it's the latest fad or they are just trying to appear cool? There's a lively forum discussion about this topic in our forum section. Check out the discussion there or give us your thoughts in comments.
Taking the whole ads-in-a-game theme to the next seemingly logical step, publishers of the game Project Entropia are making it possible for players to create their own ads within the game. Because of the game's focus on a virtual economy, the bying and selling of billboards seems to be a natural addition. Current player-created ads are promoting events and actions players have created in the game. Project Entropia is also part of Massive Inc.'s gaming ad network and will serve real ads purchased withing the network.
It's not a Miller Light ad but it might be a good one if it weren't for that damn Bud Lite banner in the background. Oh, and the crappy resolution, the overtly overused sexual overtone and the boobs. Beer ads should never have boobs is them. After all, that takes the attention away from the beer, right?
A couple days ago when we offered our insight on the Chevy Apprentice make your own ad site and wrote, "We think there are some voices inside G.M. that understand social media very well and knew this would happen," we felt strongly, we were right. "This" being the collection of anti-GM, anti-SUV ads people created. In today's New York Times, our assessment was proved correct when Chevrolet's Milisa Tezanos was quoted as saying, "We anticipated that there would be critical submissions. You do turn over your brand to the public, and we knew that we were going to get some bad with the good. But it's part of playing in this space." Exactly. This space is very different from old, ordered, one-way traditional media spaces of yesteryear and to expect new spaces to behave the same was is just plain dumb. Rock on GM. Now just makes some cars people want to buy and you'll be all set.
After viewing all the humorous, consumer-created SUV-bashing Tahoe ads born out of the Chevy Apprentice make-your-own ad promotion and reading some think GM is making a mistake with this, we thought we'd share out opinion that, lame as this might have been seen at first, it is, if left unedited, one of the better consumer-created marketing promotions. We think there are some voices inside GM that understand social media very well and knew this would happen. We're not surprised at all and we're not surprised they've left the negative ads up. If all we saw on that site were glowing praises of the vehicle, the promotion would simply be seen as just another lame attempt at capitalizing on a trend and a giant corporation trying to thrust it's twisted version of reality upon us.
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Hearing Joe Jaffe talk about the three C's of consumer created content with Pete Blackshaw and Jackie Huba on his Across the Sound podcast, we were reminded of having once said to a male co-worker in front of a female co-worker in reference to something completely business-related and without regard to the the female co-worker's very curvaceous figure, "three D's are better than one." Needless to say, awkward smirks and giggles followed. Thankfully, that wasn't the case after listening to this week's Across the Sound podcast which discussed the many aspects of consumer created content, consumer generated media, citizen's media or whatever label you want to place on the trend.
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To both promote their community and to make members happy they joined in the first place, social site Tagworld has launched a program whereby members can apply to have their Tagworld site featured on an outdoor billboard the company has bought to promote its service. Here's one lucky Tagworld member that was pretty excited his site was chosen to be featured.
Bucky Turco tells us fashion brand 55DSL is looking to recruit two people to travel the world, photograph an film their experiences and blog about it. It's an actual paid gig on one, if done well. will certainly create a following and hence, awareness for the brand. It's a nice adoption of and twist on the social media space and one that may permeate the brand throughout the space.
Street art site Wooster Collective has photographed a German Adidas outdoor poster campaign which consisted of the brand's logo on a white background with a hint of graffiti added. The brand hoped the public would take the hint and add to the boards. They did. While an early outdoor graffiti campaign for Sony's PSP consisted of completed graffiti placed on boards and was viewed as a lame co-op of the medium, the Adidas provides the hook to draw the public in to complete the job. Wooster Collective likes it. We do too. There's more here.
In a perfect example of how a movie trailer can completely twist the subject of the actual movies, this trailer for the classic, Jaws, created by Ari Eisner and Mike Dow, turns the horro show into a love story called Must Love Jaws. Must Love YouTube for proliferating this stuff.
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