NY Times on Consumer-Generated Crap

29.5.07 - MITLab

NY Times on Heinz's "create an ad for us" YouTube contest gone not quite as expected: "Companies have found that inviting consumers to create their advertising is often more stressful, costly and time-consuming than just rolling up their sleeves and doing the work themselves."

I don't think it's about agencies wanting free ads. It's more about brands trying to open up to participatory culture and letting fans into the institutionalized part of the meaning-making world, but the YouTube tool is often way too blunt for the purpose. It's also a convenient short-cut: "Hm, so how to we let people interact with the brand? Oh, why, let's do YouTube." I still don't understand why the contests should be about video. How many "user-generated" print campaigns have we seen besides Nikon's?

Anyway, YouTube has a special contest page; there you'll find Samsung, Cingular, TaxCut, among others.

The Battle for the Bronchs

May, 29 2007 - AdverBlog

From Australia, a kind of social campaign to raise awareness on asthma (I wrote “kind of” because it’s sponsored by Glaxo Smith Kline). Created by Tequila, Battle for the Bronchs is an interactive comic book combining live action video set in an illustrated city inside a pair of lungs. The site is aimed at young people who may suffer from asthma but tend to ignore the warning signs and avoid traditional health management messages.