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Trend: Consumer Generated Campaigns
Written By Florian Peter on Friday, May 12, 2006 at 11:32 PM | In Marketing, USA Please Comment
Consumer Generated Campaigns capitalize on the trend of consumers creating video content and now also advertising.
Trend Description
Throughout the past months we’ve reported on the trend of consumers creating content such as blogs, podcasts and sharing their self made video files on video portals such as You Tube and Google Video (see Viewer Generated Content) . Soon marketers capitalized on this trend and created campaigns that spread virally on these portals (see Video Portal Marketing). Now marketers have embraced this trend even further and are engaging consumers to do the marketing for them. Ubiquitous digital technology for creating media makes it possible. The result: Consumers create their own commercials, mostly for fame, sometimes for money.
Cases
Current TV – VCAMs
Current TV, the first network whose programming is partly created by the very audience who watches, encourages its viewers now also to produce some of the advertising running on the network. Young filmmakers and video producers participating on Current TV can create commercials for one of Current’s major-brand sponsors. Once the commercial or V-Cams (that is how Current TV calls viewer-created ad messages) is done, the producer can post the video on the site. Just like the rest of the network’s viewer-created content, the piece can be watched and voted by the network’s online community. If the V-Cam gets lots of votes it will be considered for air and earn the producer $1000. If the sponsor wants to distribute the V-Cam beyond Currents Network, the producer can earn up to $50,000.
American Express: 15 second clip competition
Continuing the concept of their „My life My card“ campaign, American Express announced the 15-Second Clips Competition in collaboration with the Tribeca Film Fest. The competitors had to answer 1 of 13 questions from the Amex campaign with a video clip. In the end the panel of judges led by Martin Scorcese and M. Night Shymalan scored the entries down to 100 finalists. The happy winners could take home prizes like $15,000, a video iPod, and a trip to the Closing Ceremony of the Tribeca Film Festival.Kodak: Create your own commercial
With a smart little Website, Kodak enables its customers to create their own commercial, well almost…. The commercial itself is set to make it as easy as 1, 2, 3, for the participants. They just have to upload their favorite pictures and enter their name. The amateur pictures are shown next to some world class photographs, starring in a little film about some children at a museum. Their teacher makes them listen to the pictures, makes them understand the story a single image can tell. Of course, participants can easily share their commercial online.Revver:Revver isn’t exactly a consumer generated campaign play but a good example of a video portal rewarding their consumers for their content. Revver’s idea is to share their ad revenue with the people who actually produce the content of the website (50/50 between the video’s author and the website). This is what makes this video-sharing site different from other VC2 services like Current TV http://www.current.tv/ or YouTube http://www.youtube.com/. Of course, the hosting of the video is also for free. A short, so called revverized ad is embedded in each video. Every time somebody clicks on the ad, the creator of the video gets paid. It does not matter if the video is E-mailed to friends, burned to CD, uploaded to another blog or website, or shared via P2P or IM. Revver users can even choose the kind of commmercials they want to be associated with their video.
Trend Impact
As our cases show, there are different approaches to launch consumer generated campaigns. Participation is simple and possible for everybody. The main point is the interaction with the consumer. Moreover, as technology enables consumers to carry out their creativity and produce actual content without any outside help, marketers can actually start to harness the creativity of their own target group. Given their freedom, creative consumers might show real talent. Some of them probably won’t even describe themselves as consumers but as aspiring filmmakers, creatives, art directors, producers. Consumers actually become one with the brand.
As we predicted already, the marketing side of consumer generated content is becoming more and more important. Due to TiVo and other DVRs, consumers are already used to watching what they want when they want – mostly without commercials. Consumer Generated Campaigns offer a new, strategic way to make it beyond the screen into the actual life of the consumer, by simply sharing their personal material. Since people are increasingly eager to share their life, pictures and videos, this concept is bound to be successful.
American Express: „My life My card“ campaign
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