NY Times hence wrote an article with the catchy title “Do-it-yourself super ads“, subtitle: “be afraid, Madison Avenue. Very afraid”. The article mentions the user generated spots and their “ranking” on hulu.com and twitter, deducting that consumer know best what consumers want to see.

Well, that’s only one part of the story. And shall we say: the badly researched part of the story.

AdLab busts that story by stating a few facts that the NY Times should, in fact, have researched.

The first Doritos spot “Underdog” was created by Joshua Svoboda a 24 year old, who works as a creative director. The second spot “House Rules” was created by a writer/director from Hollywood.

Even the other Doritos commercials from the previous years plus other “UGC” clips were apparently created by people already working in film related businesses, states the above mentioned article.

So it wasn’t brand fans or advocates who put in their efforts to create a brand message for the brand they like. It was creative people, producers, writers, who were probably more interested in promoting their own “brand” through the PR associated with the clip.

It’s not really that surprising. However, the fact that this has not been picked up by the media correctly is suprising. In a way, I also fell for what might be the reason for the whole ignorance: the story of consumers creating ads with only a few hundred Dollars production costs, that are shown during the Superbowl with a mediabudget of more than $2.5 million, reaching more than 100 million viewers – it’s too good.

I work in an ad agency, so I shouldn’t like the idea of consumer generated ads. Yet due to my interest in social media marketing I did in fact like the idea. (And with everything connected to the setup of the contest, there would still be enough scope for agency work…) So it is rather disappointing to find out about the truth behind these famous examples.

• Jackie Huba predicts that Social Media will get boring and offers an amusing “in” and “out” list. Background fact: Social Media will become a regular part of daily business (and hence boring).
• Pete Blackshaw wrote in an Ad Age column that social media marketers will need to embrace three critical words in 2010: Serve, Shrink and Simplify. Since you need to log on to Ad Age, you can read some excerpts on Pete’s blog. The main idea: service is the new marketing, our screens are shrinking, make things easer/reduce complexity for your customers.
• The groundswell team lists 6 predictions, but you get an excerpt. Nevertheless, you can read the topline predictions on the groundswell blog. Overarching theme is, according to the blog, that social technology will be a mainstram part of what marketers do.
• eMarketer lists 12 predictions for 2010. The insights include “future monetization models, the effect of transparency on advertising, social and search, mobile, social commerce, public relations, social advertising, Twitter, video and mom/pop internet usage”.
• TrendsSpotting Blog has compiled a list of trends from several social media experts who send their input in 140 characts, hat tipping to twitter.
  TrendsSpotting’s 2010 Social Media Influencers – Trend Predictions in 140 Characters

  View more documents from Taly Weiss.
• Read/WriteWeb has two different kinds of lists: General predictions and social media predictions. The general predictions consists of the views of 9 contributors from rww and cover a wide variety of topics concerning social media, mobile, cloud computing, Google/Twitter/Facebook/bing, etc. The social media predictions list 10 ways social media will change in 2010, i.e. how it will become part of everyday life, being increasingly used on mobile devices, ROI will become more important (and will be measured), etc.
• Mitch Joel predicts, that 2010 will be the year that we shift from the advertising age to the marketing age. Strictly speaking, he writes, it’s not a prediction, it is something that is happening right now.
• The NY Times “bits” blog writes about 2010 being the year of the tablet PC. Quite a few companies seem to be on the verge of presenting their versions, but everyone is, of course eager for Apple to release theirs!
• Mashable has a post about 2010 being the year of the data. Data that should and will be used by every profession – journalism, marketing, SEO, Advertising, PR, etc. User data (static and behavioural data, I suppose) is becoming ever more important. Somehow I don’t think this is a trend just for 2010. It has been going on in 2009 already and will stay with us forever…
• Pete Cashmore of Mashable wrote a special for CNN Tech about the 10 web trends to watch in 2010. the keywords are: Realtime, location, augmented reality, content curation, cloud computing, internet TV and Movies, convergence conundrum, social gaming, mobile payments, fame abundance and privacy scarcity.

As I find more predictions, I will add them (let me know if you know of any).

Poptent is the best place for independent and freelance videographers to build their portfolios, connect with companies and brands for commercial work. Here you will find the best and brightest up and coming creative minds in the business. Hire them. Collaborate with them. Join them. We’re building a crowdsourcing revolution and we want you to be a part of it. Become part of our community by clicking the JOIN NOW button.

It looks like some form of agency 2.0, and at the same time it raises the same debate that comes up when brands ask for creative submissions without guaranteeing a reward for every submission. Videocreators get the chance of having their video selected by a well known brand, yet they risk loosing their initial investment (time&money) if their video isn’t selected. And the brand gets a range of creations to choose from without having to pay for every single one.

Here is an example of a current project, asking for video content for snickers:

You know Snickers®, that unique, delicious, and substantial combination of peanuts, chocolate, caramel and nougat.
This assignment is to develop video content starring Snickers®. They are looking for either traditional ‘commercials’ or pass-along (viral) videos — original, authentic and entertaining Snickers® content which consumers will pass along, and use as inspiration for their own content creation.
Your challenge is to be creative, so don’t just follow the approach of previous Snickers® campaigns. You can either:
• Produce a fun, engaging traditional :30 second commercial
• Or produce a pass-along (viral) video of about :30 seconds in length …you choose
Your creative ‘bulls eye’ is males age 18-34. Snickers® has played a memorable role in ‘guy culture,’ with a long and celebrated history as the ‘go-to-bar’ for satisfying hunger.
You could earn $5,000 for each video they purchase or one of the $2000in guaranteed awards. Register below and read the Creative Brief for all the details and some more delicious inspiration.

$5.000 doesn’t sound like much to me, but I guess it depends on what they want to do with it.

The program — which included a test-drive program — has elicited the interest of about 50,000 potential buyers, 97% of which don’t drive a Ford at present.

In toto, official Fiesta Movement content has drawn 4.3 million YouTube views, 540,000 flickr views and 3 million Twitter impressions.

These are quite remarkable results, indeed!

And all this is achieved with “$0 ad spent and a fraction of marketing costs”. I assume it really does compare well to traditional advertising efforts.

Yet communicating a figure of $0 seems to send out the wrong signal. The total costs (for 100 cars, the website, the staff at Ford, etc.) might be “a fraction” of what is usually spend, but somehow I can’t imagine this whole campaing having been “cheap”.

Now there is a study looking into how users are actually talking about brands on twitter. At ReadWriteWeb there is a post stating that tweets about brands are more often about information rather than sentiment.

According to the study, which looked at 150,000 tweets, 11.1% of the brand-related tweets were information-providing while 18.1% were information-seeking. The latter of these two is especially useful to companies looking to understand what questions and concerns customers have about their products. However, the large majority of the tweets – 48.5% – were simply comments made in passing which mentioned the brand but whose primary focus was something else.

In only roughly 23% users were expressing sentiment (positive or negative) about brands.

So why is that? Why don’t people express so many negative opinions on twitter as compared to the rest of the web? ReadWriteWeb assumes that it is the easy and quick handling of twitter which results in many more positive or neutral, fact based chatter.

That does make sense to me. People will go through a lot of effort, writing long and nasty blog posts, when they’re fed up. But they won’t do the same for positive or even neutral remarks, unless the brand experience was rather extraordinary.

Hornbach is a German DIY store that everyone watching tool time would enjoy. They had TV spots running for quite some time, in which people completed seemingly complicated projects around the house – refurbishing bathrooms, redesigning gardens, etc.

It is a logical progression to start a contest asking users for their most ambitious  DIY projects. The whole setup does not convince due to originallity. There have been better ideas for contests.

It excites due to size of presence. Advertising for a whole day on spiegel.de (and I guess other large sites, too) is no small deal. Also, they’re willing to sponsor up to 10 projects with up to 15k Euros per project. Also, I should add: they’re not just asking for any project, rather, they are looking for extreme, original (what’s the translation for “wahnwitzig”?) ideas. Nothing of the ordinary kind.

In the contest conditions, they of course make sure that they can publish photos and names of participants, as well as reserving the right to document and publish the whole project they will sponsor. Unless they only receive applications of complete idiots, which I obviously doubt, they will have some fine material for future advertising, authentic, close to the community, relevant and most likely touching. We’ll see in a few months time, I’ll keep you posted.

Unilever seems to think so. First, they fired Lowe and now they call out for Users to create the next TV spot for their peperami brand. They’re offering $10.000 in a competition to create ideas for the next TV and Print campaign. Their benchmark seem to be the Doritos and Pringles campaigns, where the winning ideas cost about $6 or $300 to produce. A rather ironic quote in these circumstances by Unilever about Lowe, their agency for 16 years:

“We are extremely thankful to Lowe for the brilliant work they achieved over the last two decades and are looking forward to seeing the ideas to take Lowe’s legacy forward into the next era of Animal.”

It’s a punch in the face of Lowe. And of course, that is worth a test. However, “Unilever said it has no plans to retain a full-time ad agency for the Peperami account in future.” It’s one thing to test this kind of approach on singular occasions. Not sure, weather this is a good idea for the long run – when not piloted first.

In my humble opinion they’re not taking into account the laziness and complacency of the general public. It’s fun producing ads the first time around, maybe the second or third, too. At some point, novelty will wear off and it will become the “daily grind” – yet with no guaranteed pay off.

Another example: Audi also engaged in some crowdsourcing, however it is not as directly tied to daily business. Instead, they’re asking for inspiration, they want users to help them design the car of the future.They’re approach is a little different:

Audi is posting videos of their design process, information about the contest as it progresses, and soliciting questions and feedback to find out what the fans would like to see in a car of the future. It wants its 300,000 fans to know that as a company, Audi listens to its customers and wants to engage in a conversation about the future.

Is this any better? They don’t seem to offer any remuneration or prizes, so they’re also not raising any materialistic hopes. Who ever joins the conversation does so out of passion or joy, not because he or she hopes to win anything.

There has been an extensive debate about these kinds of crowdsourcing projects, especially about the speculative work involved. People participating in these kind of crowdsourcing contests, activities etc. don’t know whether they’ll get paid or if it will stay “a hobby”. There is a chance of winning a lot of money, but the odds gets smaller, the more people participate. At the same time, brands face a much higher potential of actually receiving something worth airing, the more people participate. It doesn’t sound like a win-win situation to me.

Crowdsourcing projects should be organised in a way that is rewarding for both sides. For marketers in my view this means: organise contests, that are mainly fun for the audience. And if want to receive something in return, make sure you don’t look greedy.

(Also, if your interested in some more crowdsourcing casestudies (and you can read German), see this list here.)

Now, since June there is Fiat on the web. A wordpress powered site – actually a blog – with all the ingredients: a facebook widget, a youtube gallery, same with flickr, friendfeed is integrated, delicious links accessible, latest twitter updates: every “mandatory” item seems to be present.

I am not mentioning that because it appears so fantastically special. Instead, I am slowly getting the perception that these kind of social brand presence aggregator sites are become “business as usual”. Or rather: should be considered by brand marketers as a mandatory online marketing component. Yet: how many of those sites have we really seen? How many brands actually have sufficient social media presences in order to justify such a site?

In the ultimate foreign exchange program, our 100 agents are spending six months behind the wheel of their own Fiesta, sharing their experiences, and completing monthly missions to show you what experiencing the Ford Fiesta is all about, way in advance of the U.S. launch in 2010.

FiestaMovement.com pulls in all of our agents’ content across the web to let you follow the Movement in one convenient place.  And each month will highlight different themed Missions, from Travel, Adventure, and Social Activism to Technology, Style & Design, and Entertainment.

Apparently, over 4.000 people applied for this. You can follow the agents on all the usual social media suspects: twitter, facebook, youtube, flickr and on blogs. Plus potentially a few more – it seems to be up to the individual agents, where they want to be present.

The main campaign site is an aggregator of all the agents’ content. All photos, blog entries, youtube videos,tweets, etc. you can follow on this site, or alternatively via one common RSS feed. Unfortunately, you are not able to participate in any way on the campaign site. No comment option, no voting, etc. At least for now. Once they start the monthly missions (from  May 3rd) this might change, we’ll see. However, it might well be their strategy to keep participation in those places, where the content is, where users are used to participate with content: within the social networks themselves.

According to this source here (in German), the project is the single most important piece of “marketing” for that car. Sounds like there will be no TV, no print advertising, etc. Quite an interesting approach, definitely one I will follow and see how it develops.

I really like social media aggregation projects like this. They are amongst the most complex to implement, believe me, both in terms of technical integration, as well as working out responsibilities and processes within the agency and with the client. Especially when you’re dealing with time frames that last longer than the usual campaign, i.e. at least 6 months, as in this case (if you include recruitment and teaser phase, which we seem to be in right now).

Last, but not least, you need considerable staff 24/7 to maintain the community to filter not acceptable content (yes, for most projects, there will be some!), if they do actually monitor external commentary. (Because, as mentioned above, you don’t seem to be able to comment or participate at all.)

(By the way, does anyone know the agency behind this?)

Need a short URL for twitter? try http://url.so-smart.be/ instead of the typical tinyurl.com – this is a nice marketing idea by smart, the shortest car around.

• A rather cruel (viral) video, could be a little less gruesome, if you ask me. But then, some say, a good viral video needs violence, blood and disgustingness. However, they called it: “violence is no solution” – it’s an advert for a secure  e-commerce shop.

McDonalds obviously has nothing to do with it:

A McDonald’s rep confirmed that the stunt wasn’t commissioned by the fast feeder. However, he was impressed with the publicity. The rep said: “We were surprised and entertained by the video of Pharrell performing [our jingle]. We certainly welcome him as a customer, and we appreciated his spontaneous and funky celebration of our food.”

And I wonder: what will McD do next, how will they appropriately (digitally) respond to this video, which gathered half a million views in only a few days?

(Found at Werbeblogger)

Related to this, two blog posts by Tom Smith caught my attention in the last couple of days:

Tom first wrote a post about why big brands struggle with social media (marketing):

1. Social Media is often viewed as just another marketing channel

2. It does not fit into current structures

3. Communities and content are global

4. Social media needs a long term approach

5. No guaranteed results

6. The metrics are new

The blogpost caused a long discussion about big brands in social media, causing Tom to write an update called “why we all benefit from big brand being in social media“:

This was around the idea that big brands shouldn’t be active in social media, as the presence of big business will destroy the consumer driven spirit and purity of what the social revolution stands for.

Big brand involvement for some feels like a sellout. However, now that social media is mass market, I strongly believe that this viewpoint misses the big picture. I believe that we all benefit as consumers from big brands being in social media.

1. Social media drives complete transparency

2. Social media drives quality product

3. Social media can be a great customer service channel

4. Social Media creates products that we want

5. You control the relationship

6. Big brands keep our access free

7. Big brands have interesting stories to tell

8. Users drive the content and conversation

Good food for thought, even though I think the example given for the customer service channel is a bit far fetched – I wouldn’t consider a twitter dialogue good service… But hey, some might like that.

1. “Free Doritos,” Joe Herbert, Batesville, IN
2. “New Flavor Pitch,” Oren Brimer, New York, NY
3. “Power of the Crunch,” Eric Heimbold, Venice, CA
4. “The Chase,” Chris Roberts, Burbank, CA
5. “Too Delicious,” Michael Goubeaux, Los Angeles, CA

One of them will be shown during the superbowl. Even the contestants don’t know yet, which one will be aired. They will have to wait until superbowl sunday, in order to find out whether they won, or not. And they will only win the $1 mio., if the ad tops the USA TODAYs annual Ad Meter.

I don’t know how likely that will be, but if the ad competes against all the other professionally made ads of last year, it will be difficult for this particular consumer to rank high, I guess.

Well, here is what can happen if you let the Swedish Style take over the Oval Office:

Not sure about that

But starting in 4 days, people will have the chance to add their own suggestions. Apparently, an Oval Office planner will be up and running by then.

Don’t think, somehow, that Obama will react to that…

Recently, speculations have been increasing about the whole thing being a fake. Well, now Matt answers to this accusations, admitting that it was, indeed, a viral marketing campaign, that he’s an actor (he played a corpse on CSI Miami), and that all the other people in the videos are robots.

But see for yourself, it’s groundbreaking news:

(via metafilter)

1. Wassup anno 2008
Disclaimer: Budweiser’s parent company, Anheuser Busch, which originally licensed the concept for five years from Stone, was not involved in the production of the ad

2. SFW XXX Party Invitation
Diesel’s naughty montage of 1980s porn films using cartoon animation to cover up explicit scenes, just, for its 30th anniversary

3. Kobe Bryant jumps over an Aston Martin
Nike’s clever “did he or didn’t he” actually clear a car. Probably not, but it got people talking, and watching

4. Extreme Street Football
Electronic Arts trickery masterpiece featuring kids with football skills – and parkour and capoeira – using a football like you ain’t never seen

5. Take it to the next level
Guy Ritchie directs this shot-in-first-person tale of a teen footballer’s hardcore ups and downs from being discovered to losing teeth to playing for a national team

6. Tiger Woods 09 – Walk on Water
When a fan of EA’s golf game pointed out a flaw that Tiger Woods could play a “Jesus Shot” from on water, the game manufacturer’s response was this viral featuring the man himself

7. Bean Counter
One of those Mac vs PC ads where Apple prods Microsoft over spending loads on advertising Vista when it should be fixing it

8. Samsung Omnia i900 Unboxing
Samsung spoof of the tech-fan trend of filming opening the box of a new gadget for the first time

9. Fate – Leave Nothing
Emotive Nike fare of lifelong rivalry of two NFL players featuring version of sound track from the Good the Bad and the Ugly

10. Adam and Eve
Insurance company ad featuring a gay Adam and frustrated Eve that found life online after being banned from TV

1. Great Content Always Goes Hot
2. There are No Rules
3. You Can’t Build Quality Relationships Online
4. The More Friends, the Better
5. Social Media Marketing is Easy
6. Social Media Won’t Last
7. Social Media will Replace Traditional Marketing
8. Social Media is a Cure-All
9. Social Media is for Kids
10. Digg is All that Matters

Go to the site and read it, it’s great stuff!

Social networks may never find the ad dollars they’re hunting for because they don’t really have a right to them.

he continues. A provocative statement made to the Digital Non-Conference, a program by Cincinnati’s Digital Hub Initiative. His feeling is, that most social network activity is rather private in nature:

“I have a reaction to that as a consumer advocate and an advertiser,” he said. “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”

These private conversations are, well, private. But these ads are just as obtrusive as all the advertising in the pub your spending your time with your friends at. We’re used to having social interactions in surroundings covered with advertising. We just don’t want to be interrupted or bothered by it. Most facebook advertising isn’t interrupting. It’s small banner ads on the side of the screen, which I, quite frankly, rarely notice.

And while we talk about moving into places that are largely made up of consumer generated media, he states:

Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.”

True, but I guess most marketers don’t want to buy regular adspace for the very reason that most people will not notice (nor click) it. So, if they could find more interesting, more effective ways to leverage these communities – e.g. by providing something of more added value, they would happily try it. Like the little ad supported postcards you get in most german pubs. They are widely accepted and people look forward to looking at them every time they pass by the little postcard rack on their way to the rest rooms.

These added value things could be, for example, small applications that enrich your social network profile:

He cited Facebook applications as a potentially valuable vehicle for advertisers, one in which they can create an environment that’s favorable for their brands and consumers alike.

Facebook Apps are just one things. Groups, product profiles, etc. are other possibilities. Imagination and social skills are key to finding these new value adders for social networks…