Articles in Consumer Generated
This is quite an interesting video on what features pre-schoolers would incorporate into a “Magic Phone”.
Perspective: Ok, much of the suggestions are silly, perhaps even impossible, but that’s the whole idea. Kids don’t have the normal reality boundaries that we have as adults, and make a great source for creative thinking. Have you asked your kids what features they would build into your next product?
I often use the George Masters advertisement in my presentations as one of the first examples of Consumer Generated Content.
Now here’s another IPOD ad, this time for the IPOD Touch product.
Which was covered by this NY Times article and at the time the article describes the number of Youtube views as 2,131 times.
Just to show that traditional media can still impact new media, that number is now has 273,992 times.
Blinkbox is a new site that allows you to customise video clips from your favourite movie, TV show or viral.
You can chose from a range of videos, and then insert your own text which runs on the start of the output video mashup.
The resulting video mashup can be inserted into your website, or you can email the link to your friends.
Blinkbox has contracts with several content producers, which gives them quite a large selection of clips.
The site hopes to monetize this by linking any blinks allowing viewers to rent or purchase the movie or TV show.
Genius Rocket, is a community designed to allow companies with Creative needs to connect with Creative resources, who submit creative entries which are then scored by the members of the Genius Rocket community.
The concept is valid, but whether the site is successful will depend on the quality of creative talent it can recruit, and then whether it has enough “assignments” to allow this community to be rewarded. I suspect agencies and perhaps small businesses will be the main users of this site seeking cost effective creative input.
Stacy’s chips .. (part of Frito lay), couldn’t afford to provide a sample of their chips to everyone in the US .. that would be 300 million chip packets. So instead, they sent a sample pack to everyone called Stacy .. which was 133,000 people.
As well as receiving the Brand story, the Stacy recipients were invited to share their sample with their friends with the following message.
I can’t claim to be a Baseball fan, but I love to talk about campaigns that let consumers have a real say in determining an outcome.
And that’s exactly what Marc Ecko is doing with the Barry Bond’s baseball that broke the number of home run records .. 756 to be precise.
You can even join the conversation on Youtube and Myspace
Perspective: The competition is pretty simple, but given the 10,010,552 votes so far, it’s sure to generate over 756 thousand conversations! Are your giving your consumers a reason to experience and talk about your brand?
Heinz has just announced the winner of their Top This promotion, which invited consumers across America to create the next ad for their Ketchup product.
The Top This TV competition website describes the competition as
We said make us laugh. Make us cry. Make us say, “Wow! Why didn’t we think of that?” But make it something you’d want to see on TV.
Well, people uploaded a boatload of commercials to YouTube that they wrote, cast and shot themselves—and spent tens of thousands of hours watching them.
Four runners-up will win $5,700, and their commercial will air on The Today Show on September 17. The grand prize winner will win $57,000.
Oh, and eternal glory.
Watch the winning Top This commercial on the Primetime Emmy® Awards, Live! September 16th, 8pm/7c on FOX.
In an attempt to attract young people, Leader Newspapers (owned by Newscorp) has created a local search site called Nook.
The site is intended to be a lot more than just local search, allowing users to join the conversation and write about local venues such as restaurants, review local tradesmen, as well as discuss local issues.
There are no ads on the site yet, but there’s little doubt that the site will start to run ads once the content and audience numbers grow.
Perhaps because alcohol products have had greater restrictions advertising on mainstream channels and therefore have had more time to experiment with other levers. But it is now more evident with the announcement that Jim Beam’s CMO Rory Finlay is committed to refocusing it’s advertising budget into activities aimed at generating Word of mouth.
Word of mouth marketing is not new. It started around the camp-fire when people debated over what were the best hunting tools, and conversations continued into market places where trade flourished. But since the invention of the TV, which radically changed the way brands spoke to consumers, many big brands have either forgotten or ignored the levers that drive word of mouth marketing.
Nearly 1400 members of a facebook group known as “Bring back the Wispa” seem to have convinced Cadbury to relaunch the historical chocolate bar, which will be relaunched on October. There are about 90 facebook groups that were used by Wispa fans to record their appreciation for the brand.
“We have noticed the web interest for some time and the consumer passion has undeniably swayed our opinion to relaunch Wispa.” said Cadbury spokesman Tony Bilsborough. He went on to say “This is the first time that the power of the internet played such an intrinsic role in the return of a Cadbury brand,”.
