This is a trend that has started to pop up in the ad world. Essentially, it involves companies looking to their consumers to come up with ad concepts for them.
The logic is that it makes more sense to ask your target market directly what they want to see/think is funny than pass it through layers of advertising folk who are apparently totally detached from the emotion of the brand, and who water down the ad at every turn with their own bias.
Also it’s free.
So it’s not a terrible idea.
However advertising copywriters aren’t really too concerned about being displaced anytime soon.
Consumer generated ads have had mixed results. While there is a lot to be said about truck drivers making ads for truck drivers, the main problem is that writing ads isn’t as easy as it looks. Most of the stuff consumers come up usually fails to address the mechanics of advertising communications in a strategic way, such as maintaining brand consistency, tone, voice and manner, or creating an original concept which highlights the unique product feature, or conceptualizing in a way that can be integrated across several mediums.
Not that there is anything wrong with ads that depend purely on talk power. In my opinion, for startups and new products, talk power is the way to go.
Either way, the NFL has recently jumped on the bandwagon – and here is the result.
NFL winning ad
(the grapevine has been suggesting that the concept came out of an ad agency anyway)
