March 29, 2007
Consumers Marketing to Themselves
By Bernice Hurst, Managing Director, Fine Food Network
Where America leads, the world sometimes follows. Certainly in terms of consumption and finding ways to increase it, this is true. Countless surveys can be cited to emphasize that people (read consumers) are happy to be targeted if they feel involved and engaged.
Announce opportunities for user-generated content for advertising messages. Throw the audience a bone – the chance to win fame, semi-glamorous prizes or mini-fortunes and they rush to their computers. Sure, there are loads of lame submissions, but in each others’ eyes (cases where viewers’ votes count) there are enough gold nuggets to justify the exercise. Agencies save money on their own creative teams and clients make money on both short-term sales and longer-term loyalty. Participants feel important and valued. As the media world turns in time, space and cyberspace, so the 21st century economy ebbs (OK, there are a few bad ads) and flows. Surely, this is democracy in action.
Al Gore’s latest project, Current TV, showing in the US for the past 18 months, launched in the UK in March and is targeting 18-34 year olds. Referring to both content and advertising, Mr. Gore says viewer-created content is compelling, entertaining and relevant.
The
British Department of Transport along with agency Leo Burnett and MTV recently
invited 12-16 years old to come up with commercials about road safety. Cadbury’s
Crème Eggs are working with YouTube, half of whose audience is under 35. Current
TV aims at 18-34 year olds.
Discussion questions: Is using consumers to write copy for ads in exchange for fame, prizes and/or cash a way of encouraging participation and ownership or just the lazy account exec’s way out? Does it stimulate sales, stimulating interest among younger people while making manufacturers/retailers happy or are they just taking advantage of people in an effort to save money and reduce the cost of marketing?
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There’s a whole complex and expensive science (and it’s real science) aimed at getting into the mind of the consumer. Letting the consumer’s mind come to you through consumer-created ads makes all the sense in the world.
And yes, eventually we’ll get tired of it and do something else. Whoever knows what that is goes to the head of the line.
Consumers have always marketed to themselves and will continue to do so. When asked about the sharpest marketing tool in the toolbox, anyone who knows anything about the topic will always say, “word of mouth.” It’s the epitome of “Consumers Marketing to Themselves.”
What’s the most successful ad form? Testimonials. “I lost fifty pounds with this diet.” “They treat me right at this store.” “Where did you get that fabulous purse?” This is not rocket surgery or brain science, and it’s definitely not cyclical.
Consumers have been writing ad copy for decades–sometimes negative and sometimes positive. Every time you see an online survey or performance review for “whatever,” you’re seeing customers writing ad copy.
The idea that ad agencies (of which I am a long-time veteran) try to save money by using consumers to write ad copy is absurd. Who evaluates the consumer comments? Do you fire your copywriters and depend on customers’ written responses? What happens when the consumer-comment-source runs dry? “Oh, let’s go re-hire all those copywriters we fired!”
I’m with Roger, Mark and Ryan–consumer-created creative is a trend that comes and goes in cycles that roughly parallel the spread of new media.
Once consumers get tired of the production process, they go on to the next new thing, and agencies get back to the business of producing advertising.
But I agree that consumer reviews are here to stay, and that’s going to mean the ads have to be true–any disconnect between brand promise and delivery is going to get nailed faster in those reviews than even a functional FTC could enforce.
What that also means is that brands are going to have to listen to those conversations carefully–a formidable task, but getting easier all the time, thanks to new text-analysis tools that can extract real data from natural language in context.
Right now those tools are in the purview of the major research companies, like my client, Maritz. (Yes, that’s a plug. I recently wrote them a product sheet on this technology, and I think it’s way cool.)
But in a few years, with the coming of the semantic web, it may be that we’ll all have tools almost as powerful sitting on our desktops, or in our browsers, or wherever.
That seems to be the way technology works–I’m confident that when that happens, the research folks will have another big breakthrough that I’ll be swooning over in this space as we talk about better ways to deliver on the brand promise.
Consumers always have an ear for the personal recommendations of their peers, friends and families. After personal experience, credible word of mouth recommendations are the biggest motivator of consumer behavior. The impact is far beyond advertising–for which the retail industry spends 4% of its revenues.
Retailers have long taken advantage of this fact, but not in any controlled way. Word of mouth was cheap, but effective, and absolutely beyond the retailer’s control. When an individual has a good retail experience, they often tell their friends. The friends then tell theirs. And people try the retailer for in search of their own experience. That’s why Starbucks grew to global proportions without spending a penny on traditional advertising.
With pervasive Internet connectivity, suddenly the shoppers experience and personal recommendations can be extended far beyond conversation over the back yard fence or the neighborhood barbecue. Best practice for retail websites: offer users the chance to comment on their experiences and to review the products purchased. Advertisers are seeking consumer-content. Word-of-mouth, which seemed illusive and arbitrary before the Internet age, is now suddenly channeled and harnessed. And once again the Internet has us standing on our heads trying to understand the new rules.
This is essentially a parallel to the current fascination with reality TV shows.
It is apparent that programming and messages can be more effective (and certainly cheaper) when they engage people with an interactive approach.
The question is whether you want a carefully cultivated and valuable brand property subjected to this kind of open-ended communication.
Peer stories are always the most credible, but don’t look to advertising agencies to lay down and die without a fight.
Consumer-created advertising was big in the 1930s, when radio listeners were given prizes for writing essays on why they loved a brand. The winning entries were read over the air. Similar contests were run in national magazines, like Life and Reader’s Digest. The same kind of tactics were common in the 1950s and 1960s on TV. YouTube-like contests took this one step further by showing actual home-made commercials. The biggest problem: once the gimmick wears itself out, the winning entries better be on-message and memorable.
Consumer-created advertising will not be as influential as consumer reviews. The Internet has not only radically changed how consumers research and purchase products, it has transformed the most crucial element influencing purchasing decisions: word of mouth and friends’ recommendations. What was once conducted “over the fence” (face-to-face) is now conducted online (“peer-to-peer”), in chat rooms, on web sites, or through email and instant messaging.
Social media and user reviews should now be part of every retailer’s long-term marketing and communications plans. Advocacy marketing requires engagement metrics. That calls for experimentation, testing, measurement, and continual refinement.
The strategy of “Consumers Marketing to Themselves” by using contests and rewards to stimulate interest is the newest generation of viral marketing. Other newer approaches will follow in the years to come as YouTube and other video internet technologies for the public become even more advanced and more widely used across greater demographics. Having consumers market to themselves has always been a formidable strategy until it becomes a trend that wears out its welcome. We’re not there yet. For today, it’s still a smart approach to get out the buzz in a fairly efficient manner.
Consumer generated advertising is a fad that will fade as quickly as its popularity grew. To reiterate what’s already been said, consumers respond to feedback, both positive and negative from other consumers, and smart companies find ways of sharing the positive feedback with other consumers in order to generate new customers.
“Consumer-creatives” sit at the most highly interactive end of the brand involvement spectrum. They represent a segment of the brand’s community that may be turned into influencers for other consumers.
I think Mary’s speculation that this type of participation in brand messaging is related to new media cycles is most insightful and worthy of deep thought. A core principal of media ecology holds that existence of the medium itself (or any technology) causes cultural impact which may be independent of the message content. (“The medium is the message,” famously uttered by Marshall McLuhan.)
Interestingly for the present discussion, multiple communications technologies–Internet, software, email, digital video cameras, personal computers, broadband connectivity, mobile phone (the media) – all combine to enable customer-created ad content (the message).
Advertisers can tap into their brand culture by providing a bit of motivation for consumer-creatives–cash prizes are nice, but 15 seconds of fame between the halves of the Superbowl is even more exciting. There–now I’ve referenced Warhol and McLuhan in the same dispatch–I can take the rest of the day off….
Consumer-generated advertising can be fun for consumers and differentiating for the company. It is often more credible and engaging than “traditional” advertising.
To attract younger consumers, viewer-created content is essential.
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There’s a whole complex and expensive science (and it’s real science) aimed at getting into the mind of the consumer. Letting the consumer’s mind come to you through consumer-created ads makes all the sense in the world.
And yes, eventually we’ll get tired of it and do something else. Whoever knows what that is goes to the head of the line.
Consumers have always marketed to themselves and will continue to do so. When asked about the sharpest marketing tool in the toolbox, anyone who knows anything about the topic will always say, “word of mouth.” It’s the epitome of “Consumers Marketing to Themselves.”
What’s the most successful ad form? Testimonials. “I lost fifty pounds with this diet.” “They treat me right at this store.” “Where did you get that fabulous purse?” This is not rocket surgery or brain science, and it’s definitely not cyclical.
Consumers have been writing ad copy for decades–sometimes negative and sometimes positive. Every time you see an online survey or performance review for “whatever,” you’re seeing customers writing ad copy.
The idea that ad agencies (of which I am a long-time veteran) try to save money by using consumers to write ad copy is absurd. Who evaluates the consumer comments? Do you fire your copywriters and depend on customers’ written responses? What happens when the consumer-comment-source runs dry? “Oh, let’s go re-hire all those copywriters we fired!”
I’m with Roger, Mark and Ryan–consumer-created creative is a trend that comes and goes in cycles that roughly parallel the spread of new media.
Once consumers get tired of the production process, they go on to the next new thing, and agencies get back to the business of producing advertising.
But I agree that consumer reviews are here to stay, and that’s going to mean the ads have to be true–any disconnect between brand promise and delivery is going to get nailed faster in those reviews than even a functional FTC could enforce.
What that also means is that brands are going to have to listen to those conversations carefully–a formidable task, but getting easier all the time, thanks to new text-analysis tools that can extract real data from natural language in context.
Right now those tools are in the purview of the major research companies, like my client, Maritz. (Yes, that’s a plug. I recently wrote them a product sheet on this technology, and I think it’s way cool.)
But in a few years, with the coming of the semantic web, it may be that we’ll all have tools almost as powerful sitting on our desktops, or in our browsers, or wherever.
That seems to be the way technology works–I’m confident that when that happens, the research folks will have another big breakthrough that I’ll be swooning over in this space as we talk about better ways to deliver on the brand promise.
Consumers always have an ear for the personal recommendations of their peers, friends and families. After personal experience, credible word of mouth recommendations are the biggest motivator of consumer behavior. The impact is far beyond advertising–for which the retail industry spends 4% of its revenues.
Retailers have long taken advantage of this fact, but not in any controlled way. Word of mouth was cheap, but effective, and absolutely beyond the retailer’s control. When an individual has a good retail experience, they often tell their friends. The friends then tell theirs. And people try the retailer for in search of their own experience. That’s why Starbucks grew to global proportions without spending a penny on traditional advertising.
With pervasive Internet connectivity, suddenly the shoppers experience and personal recommendations can be extended far beyond conversation over the back yard fence or the neighborhood barbecue. Best practice for retail websites: offer users the chance to comment on their experiences and to review the products purchased. Advertisers are seeking consumer-content. Word-of-mouth, which seemed illusive and arbitrary before the Internet age, is now suddenly channeled and harnessed. And once again the Internet has us standing on our heads trying to understand the new rules.
This is essentially a parallel to the current fascination with reality TV shows.
It is apparent that programming and messages can be more effective (and certainly cheaper) when they engage people with an interactive approach.
The question is whether you want a carefully cultivated and valuable brand property subjected to this kind of open-ended communication.
Peer stories are always the most credible, but don’t look to advertising agencies to lay down and die without a fight.
Consumer-created advertising was big in the 1930s, when radio listeners were given prizes for writing essays on why they loved a brand. The winning entries were read over the air. Similar contests were run in national magazines, like Life and Reader’s Digest. The same kind of tactics were common in the 1950s and 1960s on TV. YouTube-like contests took this one step further by showing actual home-made commercials. The biggest problem: once the gimmick wears itself out, the winning entries better be on-message and memorable.
Consumer-created advertising will not be as influential as consumer reviews. The Internet has not only radically changed how consumers research and purchase products, it has transformed the most crucial element influencing purchasing decisions: word of mouth and friends’ recommendations. What was once conducted “over the fence” (face-to-face) is now conducted online (“peer-to-peer”), in chat rooms, on web sites, or through email and instant messaging.
Social media and user reviews should now be part of every retailer’s long-term marketing and communications plans. Advocacy marketing requires engagement metrics. That calls for experimentation, testing, measurement, and continual refinement.
The strategy of “Consumers Marketing to Themselves” by using contests and rewards to stimulate interest is the newest generation of viral marketing. Other newer approaches will follow in the years to come as YouTube and other video internet technologies for the public become even more advanced and more widely used across greater demographics. Having consumers market to themselves has always been a formidable strategy until it becomes a trend that wears out its welcome. We’re not there yet. For today, it’s still a smart approach to get out the buzz in a fairly efficient manner.
Consumer generated advertising is a fad that will fade as quickly as its popularity grew. To reiterate what’s already been said, consumers respond to feedback, both positive and negative from other consumers, and smart companies find ways of sharing the positive feedback with other consumers in order to generate new customers.
“Consumer-creatives” sit at the most highly interactive end of the brand involvement spectrum. They represent a segment of the brand’s community that may be turned into influencers for other consumers.
I think Mary’s speculation that this type of participation in brand messaging is related to new media cycles is most insightful and worthy of deep thought. A core principal of media ecology holds that existence of the medium itself (or any technology) causes cultural impact which may be independent of the message content. (“The medium is the message,” famously uttered by Marshall McLuhan.)
Interestingly for the present discussion, multiple communications technologies–Internet, software, email, digital video cameras, personal computers, broadband connectivity, mobile phone (the media) – all combine to enable customer-created ad content (the message).
Advertisers can tap into their brand culture by providing a bit of motivation for consumer-creatives–cash prizes are nice, but 15 seconds of fame between the halves of the Superbowl is even more exciting. There–now I’ve referenced Warhol and McLuhan in the same dispatch–I can take the rest of the day off….
Consumer-generated advertising can be fun for consumers and differentiating for the company. It is often more credible and engaging than “traditional” advertising.
To attract younger consumers, viewer-created content is essential.