Consumer Generated Content. What consumer in their right mind could be bothered doing that shit?

Am I the only person in the fucking universe that thinks this whole CGC (Consumer Generated Crap) is starting to get out of control? Seems like CBS has kicked off a promotional campaign with YouTube called 15 Seconds, through which the network is inviting Web users to post 15-second inspirational messages on the popular video sharing site. What the fuck is an Inspirational message? Will we see lots of eggs frying in a pan while some wanker tells me that’s my brain on Boddingtons? Will a Britney look-alike lecture pubescent girls not to flash their naked crotches in the playground… Oh, and of course, here’s the ultimate yawn… These user-submitted clips will be aired on CBS during specified intervals, with the first debuting during CBS’ pregame coverage of the Super Bowl. During the promotion, CBS will choose five noteworthy clips to post on CBS.com, and then judges will select the best clip among those five for its broadcast potential at least once per quarter. The five winners will then be offered Global Creative Director jobs at Y&R, CP+B, JWT, BBD&O and O&M. All the losers will be offered jobs at Draft/FCB.

You can stick those jobs up your ass... I'm starting my own shop. Generate that Madison Avenue!

Comments

[tangerine Toad]

G:

I'm with you on this one. I'm convinced UGC is perpetrated by the same people who email chain letters about needles in ballpits at McDonalds or weekly photo updates on their precious pets or children.

Go over to jaffejuice.com - it's ground zero for the perpetrators of this crap. Today, I noticed that Joe himself claimed that someone's joking comment that Apple hold a (re)naming contest for iPhone would "mean Apple acknowledging that their customers are actually valuable and have something worthwhile to contribute."

WTF? So back in pre-internet times when Cap'n Crunch had a contest to name one of their characters (I forget which one, I was pretty young at the time) they were actually acknowledging that I was valuable? Now they tell me.

Big companies are quickly going to figure out that the vast majority of people creating this content, "engaging with the brand" and otherwise broadcasting the pitiful lack of meaning in their lives, are but a small fringe group, completely unrepresentative of the mass of consumers (or humans. Your call.)

What I'd really like to see is a bunch of 15 second films from some dead-raccoon sporting ad student at one of those "let's make sure only upper middle class white people with generous parents get into the creative department" ad schools.

And finally George-- I think I might take GCD at Draft/FCB over GCD at Y&R.

But that's just me.

Toad

[makethelogobigger]

Too true. I always thought, if I ever make one of the world's best (insert name of major consumer product here), spend years researching it, sweating out countless prototypes, trying to secure funding, etc., all that stuff, I'd be damned if I turn over the marketing and advertising to Joe Blow, just because they’ve made myspace and other social media insanely popular.

Talk about a circl...knee jerk reaction.

That's also not the same thing as listening to the consumer, something the new media cheerleaders don’t distinuguish between though. (That would sell less books so they leave that part out.) To them, consumers must ‘take back brands’ as if brands stole from THEM. Well, in the paraphrased words of Bono on Helter Skelter, ‘brands should steal it back.”

Sure, consumers can tell me if they prefer 2-day or 3-day shipping, or, maybe even tell me the ways they use my product by sending in cute photos.

But turn over control to someone else to strap it to a rocket and launch it over a swimming pool on YouTube?

Nooooo thank you very much.

None of that shit should ever replace the main message of your brand. Coke & fizzies may be a cool-ass video, but don’t tell me it builds the brand like The Coke Side of Life messsaging does. I’ll take the creatives side of life over the Darwin Awards side any day.

[theo kie]

The reality of the advertising world is a difficult thing, now isn't it?

Consider the dawning realization that many of those winning much-hyped, consumer-generated content contests actually come from the marketing landscape.

Most "real folks" (as nice, wonderful and blissfully innocent as they are) haven't a clue as to what it takes to navigate the jump-through-hoops checklists clients give agencies.

I mean, how do people think we earn our salaries? Because we wear black, sport expensive, designer heels and shave our beards into beat-poet shapes? Nope (although too many "creatives" think so). Our salaries are old-fashioned blood money for the suffering endured as we we put our ideas and egos on display, ready for a good beating. Not that many of our egos don't deserve a good releasing of air...I mean, really, now.

Perception and reality are very different things, and the reality of it all? CGC is a quickly passing fad, as it's always been. It's not like we haven't been down this road before. The only difference is the faux, overly idealistic shadow cast by MySpace and its ilk. By the time the next Winter Solstice arrives, the pagans will be back at their plow wondering what happened to their 15 minutes of fame (right alongside Roehm and the other, temporary "change agents" who thought their egos were all that was needed to change the landscape).

Advertising isn't socialism. It's a dictatorship, corporate edicts coming down from the clients whose money pays for media. Then again, maybe the next step in this "consumer" experiment will be CGM...consumer-generated-media. If you want to write the ad, you pay to air it.

Now that would truly prove Time magazine's "Man of the Year" cover was worth the reflective strips it was printed on.

[tangerine Toad]

Very funny Theo- CGM

Though with Roehm and her ilk, I still think it's less about ego and all about wanting to be the "cool client" who all the agency creatives love. That desperate need to be loved is a common thread in all of them.

[Billy_Boney_and_Ma]

Ahh CGC, the latest ad fad in a long line of bullshit. I will be very happy to see this one ride off into the sunset, although it's more than likely I won't like whatever takes its place.

Just read in the NY Times that Out of Home is the "next big thing"

http://tinyurl.com/ygdxtp

“We never know where the consumer is going to be at any point in time, so we have to find a way to be everywhere,” said Linda Kaplan Thaler, chief executive at the Kaplan Thaler Group, a New York ad agency. “Ubiquity is the new exclusivity.”

[Billy_Boney_and_Ma]

Martin Agency Account Win Completes Wal-Mart Purge

MediaVest Also a Winner as Retailer Rids Itself of Julie Roehm Taint

By Matthew Creamer and Brooke Capps

Published: January 15, 2007

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Wal-mart's purge of Julie Roehm is now complete. In announcing its new agency roster Jan. 12, the retailer did a 180-degree turn from the direction Ms. Roehm, the renegade marketer ousted in December amid murky circumstances, was trying to take the staid company's marketing operation. Wal-Mart ditched both her media shop of choice and the creative-agency model she thought would help the retailer rebound from its woes.

Different culture
With the Martin Agency, Wal-Mart gets a shop that couldn't be more different in culture or approach from DraftFCB, the agency Ms. Roehm picked in October only to see that decision tossed out days after she was dismissed, or Ogilvy & Mather, the losing agency in the shootout for the $580 million account.

Both DraftFCB and Ogilvy are Madison Avenue giants that tout scale and deep expertise in direct marketing and interactive advertising, among other disciplines. Martin, on the other hand, is a Richmond, Va.-based, single-office agency known for creating ad campaigns that permeate pop culture. Its Southern roots, industry observers say, make it a better cultural fit for Wal-Mart, a company headquartered in Arkansas whose heartland values are still bruised from the embarrassment that accompanied Ms. Roehm's departure.

'Set fire to everything'
"It's pretty clear that Wal-Mart wanted to set fire to everything that Julie touched," said one executive familiar with the review.

That fire also swept up Aegis Group's Carat, Ms. Roehm's choice of media agency. Unlike DraftFCB, which was at the center of the maelstrom, Carat was allowed to re-pitch, making it a favorite among handicappers. But in the end, Carat was bested by Publicis Groupe's Media-Vest, leaving even its fiercest rivals to reflect that the Aegis shop was truly a victim of circumstance.

Wal-Mart also handed African-American creative duties to GlobalHue and Asian-market duties to IW Group. Independent Lopez Negrete successfully defended its Hispanic duties.

The departure of Ms. Roehm and Sean Womack, VP-communications architecture, set off a media firestorm. Wal-Mart never explained their dismissals, though executives close to the company said it had to do in part with ethical violations during the initial review, something both executives have publicly denied. Since then, the marketing executive in charge of Sam's Club, Mark Goodman, has also departed, and observers say Chief Marketing Officer John Fleming might be in for a reassignment, potentially to a merchandising role.

Importance for Martin Agency
The importance of the Wal-Mart win to Martin Agency can't be overstated. In recent years, high-profile work for auto insurer Geico, as well as Quizno's and Miller Genuine Draft, gained notice for the agency. But adding a massive company like Wal-Mart will do much to raise Martin's profile on that short list of integrated, single-office agencies that are some of the hottest shops in the land, outfits like Crispin Porter & Bogusky and Goodby Silverstein & Partners.

"These days, you tend to think large marketers would go for large agencies, but the exception is proving to be the rule," said Arthur Anderson, co-founder and principal at Morgan Anderson Consulting.

"Martin Agency has great creative, incredible strategic planning and a deep-down understanding of direct," said Russell Wohlwerth, principal at consultancy A-Team Advisors. "It speaks to Martin's corporate persona. They are genuinely nice people who have humility about them, and they are incredibly talented. It's not that much of a stretch from Bentonville to Richmond."

Interpubic Group win
A surprising winner in the Wal-Mart saga is Interpublic Group. Back in the fall, it was touting DraftFCB's Wal-Mart win as evidence of a turnaround, only to see that all trashed in l'affaire Roehm. Martin's victory, however, heaped some good news on top of a pair of analyst upgrades Interpublic received last week.

Interpublic's stock surged Thursday and Friday in heavy trading, hitting $13.40 early Friday afternoon-then soaring to $13.80 in the minutes after news broke on Martin's win. That's 77% above Interpublic's July 2006 multiyear low ($7.79). It closed at $13.37, up 33› in its highest close since February 2005. Finally, Interpublic closed above the price at which it traded when Michael Roth became CEO two years ago this week ($13.32).

http://adage.com/article?article_id=114282