Digital Hive

Does Apple really need an agency?

Snaps to Jackie Huba of Church of the Customer for alerting us to this one (BTW if you call yourself a marketer and you don't know, love and worship Jackie you seriously need to have your head examined). Apple apparently saw a kid's video about iPod Touch on Youtube (see below) and turned it into a TV spot. I have actually seen this spot a few times and not realized how it came to be.

The New York Times provides a bit more background if you are interested.

So what does this mean? First off, there's the kind of obvious point about Apple keeping their product closed to outside code developers, but open when it comes to marketing. Begs the question, is "user generated" OK for C, but not for IT?

Second, this UGC apparently was brought to light by the Apple marketing folks, not the agency. Raising the point, why is TBWA even needed? If you argue that the client is closer to the consumer (after all, they're in more direct contact with the consumer by selling a product to him/her than the agency ever will be), can't they just keep their eyes open for cool stuff and bring it directly to a broad consumer audience without paying the agency? Probably a controversial point, but one I think needs to be made.

Thoughts?

CPG brand actually cedes control

Who would have thunk it?  A consumer goods product, truly ceding control to their consumers...

Dorito's got tons of hype with their consumer-generated Super Bowl ad and actually ended up with arguably good ads.  Lo and behold, they've continued down the path of innovative marketing by inviting consumers to decide which new limited edition chip flavor will survive.  The idea of voting for a new product flavor or color isn't new (M&Ms, Crest, etc.) but actually releasing the product (and investing in R&D) is.  By doing so, they're encouraging immediate trial and consumer engagement with the brand in order to "fight for the flavor".

It will be interesting to see how engaged the Dorito's consumer becomes.  Check it out.www.snackstrongproductions.com 

Dove campaign - it's a global political movement, man

Check out this interesting AdAge article about the Dove campaign, which we've blogged about periodically over the past year or so (here, here, here, here, here and here - yes we love this campaign). You can view spots embedded in the AdAge article or on YouTube.

The article cites several "lessons" about the global campaign effort (I bolded AdAge's original text  to highlight what I found interesting):

• Lesson No. 1: Say what you will about globalization, but it works for idea flows. The "Real Beauty" concept originated in Ogilvy's Dusseldorf office, then rapidly made its way to London. A London newspaper article trumpeted an underlying truth about the effort: It wasn't advertising; it was politics. This was no surprise to Dove's global brand director, Silvia Lagnado. Wanting to push the $2 billion brand further, she had commissioned the research showing that only 2% of women worldwide considered themselves beautiful. The team knew from the start its concept was politically charged, and was able to test it and refine it as they took it around the world.

User generated content 101 - how it's done

My friend Amy sent me this helpful how to guide for achieving stardom on YouTube as well as in the mainstream media. (In true social media fashion, she got this from her friend Max).

1. Shoot a stupid video (actually in this case it appears to be a local TV spot but you say tomayto, I say tomahto):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAgjg3FQ_zk

2. People modify it (including yourself), using original footage, and stuff from your site.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi8tLt4vZ30 & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxB38t5qNEc

3. Next, you provide a blue-screen version of the video that aspiring modders can work with:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgYUVdyY3aI&NR

4. And you get even more modded versions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSU1eWRb1gU

5. All this gets you crazy hits, some attention from AOL's web show, "The DL," and an appearance on "Ellen."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnLH--YbKDU & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vX5m5rkPsY

My question is - since this "playbook" is probably pretty well known at this point, meaning everyone can do this and it's lost its exclusivity and uniqueness, how long will it last? Does it have staying power?

One factor that might enable the longevity of this trend - we have no attention spans these days and thus require a constant diet of new slop to consume.

User generated content - vox populi or tyranny of the elite?

Did you catch this eye-opening WSJ.com article (reg. req'd)?

Apparently, the UGC you're finding at places like Digg isn't from as broad and representative an audience of reviewers as you might think. According the the WSJ's analysis, "at Digg, which has 900,000 registered users, 30 people were responsible for submitting one-third of postings on the home page. At Netscape.com, a single user named "STONERS" -- in real life, computer programmer Ed Southwood of Dayton, Ohio -- was behind fully 217 stories over the two-week period, or 13% of all stories that reached the most popular list."

The Journal says this is "giving rise to an obsessive subculture of ordinary but surprisingly influential people who, usually without pay and purely for the thrill of it, are trolling cyberspace for news and ideas to share with their network."

Meet one - Henry Wang aka "dirtyfratboy:"

POSTS ON: Digg/Netscape
WHO HE IS: A high-school senior and varsity tennis player outside of Chicago
HOW HE DOES IT: In August, Mr. Wang posted a link to a new social-networking site Famster, saying, "I can't believe this site isn't widely known." The link got 1,700 votes and bumped Famster's daily visits to 50,000 in a day.

Here's another - a Reddit user known for scoping out striking images on the Web, Amardeep Sahota recently helped drive about 100,000 unique visitors to one amateur photographer's site.

Why does this matter? Well, for consumers, it's more important than ever to consider the source of a comment or recommendation. People who are posting could be getting paid, and their opinions may not be verified by others. The dark side of UGC, as Greg Verdino calls it.

For marketers: why bother communicating to a broad audience when just a few people are in control of the microphone? Just seek those people out, and woo them to pull you into their network of approved vendors and content. Pay them if you have to? That's where it gets dicey.

For me, a larger question also emerges - why, in this new world where everyone can participate, where technology enables the masses to make their opinions known, are people limiting their choices to just a few, mimicking exactly the old media model where a small number of publishers curated content for the marketplace, which bought it wholesale without evaluating or elaborating upon it?

AKA, 2 steps ahead for mankind, but then 2 steps back. Maybe people can't handle all the options, and it's just easier to look to a central guiding filter (there's ample behavioral and attitudinal data supporting this claim). This dynamic outweighs the possibilities offered by participation media.

It will be interesting to see how consumers and marketers cope with this new wrinkle in UGC.

Opinions from the peanut gallery?