Ad Lib: When Customers Create the AD

So its official, "WE'VE GOT THE POWER" - as consumers it has been a long standing tradition that when it comes to marketing and advertisements we fulfill the role of the passive recipients, merely taking what is thrown at us and, majority speaking , simply ignore the advertisers message. However, this is hardly the case anymore, as the article "Ad Lib: When Customers Create the Ad", demonstrates, today, "it's the consumer who runs the show for the most part... in fact forget the consumer label altogether"

I found this article to be very representative of the viral video culture that has taken hold of our generation, largely as a result of YouTube and simplicity of uploading video content to the web. However, this article is hardly assessing how one uploads a consumer created ad, but rather why they would want to create such content in the first place. It then proceeds to assess the implications of these consumer created ads from the vantage point of business firms and the different reactive stances they must uphold, as a result of this new interactive, 2 way dynamic between corporations and consumers.

One of the most striking things that this article brought to my attention, in its assessment of why consumers are creating these ads, is that consumers do it purely for the enjoyment and passion they have for a brand. In a world where brands have come to make a statement about who people are, consumers have taken it upon themselves to say something personal about the brand. Now what is most striking however about these creations is the fact that "their creation is not so much related to sales directly, as it some inner spur or impulse". Now, this really says something to me. In this day and age, where marketing behemoths spend billions of dollars annually in the hopes of gaining just one extra percent of market share, we have consumers creating ads just because they can and for FREE, no less! People have become so passionate and opinionated about specific brands and corporations that they, with no monetary incentive, have taken it upon themselves to make an opinionated statement for the rest of the world to see. And for good or bad, companies have been forced to react and embrace the ever-occurring trend of consumer creations.

While the article touches upon a variety of responses to such consumer based ads, one method I wanted to mention, as it relates to our class discussion is the strategy of facilitation. One of the very successful add campaigns that became a topic of discussion both on our twitter feed and in class is "The Old Spice Guy". Unbeknownst to me, the entertainment and humor I found in watching the "The Old Spice Guy" perform customer driven skits, such as the infamous proposal, was a combination of both consumer created ads and the art of facilitation on behalf of Old Spice. These types of ads have become so common and often go viral on the web that I wouldn't even think of it as a marketing move on behalf of a company. And while the article makes it very clear that this approach is hardly for everyone and that validation of a consumer created ad by a company can result in grievous consequences, the companies who get it just right could be onto something. I am sure most people are of course familiar with the Mentos in Coke YouTube videos (if not I am linking it below) that hit the web a couple of years ago - well apparently while I was in the process of being highly entertained by the sky-high geysers of coke I was also being marketed to?

So I suppose my question for the week is this: Is the marketing of the future moving away from the artfully constructed corporate ads, in favor of videos and multimedia, facilitated by the internet and social media, that market a brand so effectively that we are completely unaware we are being pitched a product?

So I just couldn't resist here are two of my favorite videos, which are also (I guess?) selling us something?

Here is one of the many Mentos in Coke videos:

html.html.

and my personal favorite, created by Southwest Airlines:

html. html.