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May 25, 2007
Chicken Little pecks again
Citizen-created content is "stressful, costly and time-consuming"... for the brand.
That's the latest fear-mongering about citizen-created content that has wormed its way into the pages of the New York Times. As the paper did with the advent of blogging a few years ago, the NYT is following the journalistic recipe of inciting fear about subjects for which it does not understand. (I worked at a big-city newspaper for eight years and saw this wide-eyed fear writing all the time.)
Don't be too surprised if the pitch for this particular story came from the ad agency owner who's quoted in the piece. Message-creating agencies are threatened most by sharing power and influence with citizen-participants. The loss of control is threatening, but nothing will stop the democratization of participation. There's too much broadband and too many cellphones and laptops and too many people accustomed the idea of sharing their opinions. Better to accept it now than two or three years from now when an upstart gains marketshare because it embraced participation and all of its quirks.
So to the people at Heinz who are in the midst of hosting a citizen-created ad contest, ignore the noobs. Your contest is not about "creating great advertising." It's giving everyday people a voice and a vocation. Those two tactics alone generate word of mouth. Just scrolling through some of the entries I watched 10 different ads for Heinz. Isn't that the idea? Trust me, none of them harmed my impression of your ketchup.
Press on with your experiment and use it as the foundation for building relationships that bypass the black holes of sales channels. Not everything submitted to your contest is going to look polished, like it came from an agency.
Which is precisely the idea.
Other blogs that reference Chicken Little pecks again:
» Your brand cant blink. from Spare Change.
If you are trying to run a brand that caters to a niche with a large social media presence, you simply cannot blink, or have a single flaw in your story. Weve entered the era of what is, essentially, peer-reviewed marketing and branding, except... [Read More]
Wow. spot on post. I saw the article and thought the exact same thing, boo to Heinz and bigger boo to NYT for publishing a piece so biased in its 'experts.' I blogged about this too.
Smell the fear! I couldn't agree with you more.
The only criticism I have with the Heinz project is that they are almost trying to buy customer evangelists, and I'm not so sure that can work?
Let's also not forget the goodwill that a brand can create by offering individuals a few seconds of notoriety.
Your blog is very informative. However,If you are trying to run a brand that caters to a niche with a large social media presence, you simply cannot blink, or have a single flaw in your story..Best regard..
