CGC, more than just digital fun...

On hearing the term consumer generated content (CGC) one wouldn’t be wrong for automatically thinking, comments / videos / pictures left by those on the internet feeling the need to express something. But it’s been around in more mainstream channels for years.

Think, the BBC’s Points of View programme and talk shows with the likes of  Jeremy Kyle. The audience dictates, at least to some extent, how the shows pan out. The run Cactus Kid run campaign for Oasis, by Mother and Glue through it’s wonderfully integrated approach, created consumer interaction if not strictly CGC by allowing viewers to decide the ending of the Cactus Kid story. So interaction doesn’t have to be confined to a digital space.

Channel 4 has taken CGC to a whole New level with estings their competition for views to create adverts for E4 or E4 music.

 
It's interesting how much better the entrys are for this than for say the Doritos you make it we play it

Getting people to write, star in, make the music for their hit programme Skins.

So channel for is not only recruiting brand / company advocates by encouraging its audience to interact with them, they're directly employing their audience to write their story. 

There is lots of talk about companies needing to tell interesting stories. And lots of talk about how companies need to listen to customers. Surely then the future of our industry will partly depend on our ability to turn CGC into consumer generated stories. I for one would defiantly by a story I wrote! 

This future they promised us

I spent last night at Stratstock trying to find out how the other half plan. Each talk had its merits but there were two guys Martin off of Glue and David Bain off of BMB, that were exceptional.

Martin as usual spoke around the idea of company speak over brand speak and the fact

“You can’t bore people into buying"

Living up to what he preaches regarding the idea of being interesting.

David spoke around advertising start-ups. Now, this may not have been his exact position but what I took from his talk is that start-ups are successful (in terms of planning) for two reasons.

A) They think how ever they damn well please without the burden of entrenched process.

B) They are hungry for new clients so their planners have to do a kind of horizontal or bendy planning where they swat up on a broad range of industries and clients.

The above however can also be a state of mind rather than a  time within an agencies life.

I (as part of an even bigger crowd) will enter the industry without the burden of processed thinking, although perhaps a little too unrefined; and due to lack of experience, forced to expand my knowledge of various industries. Does that mean that graduates would build the best start up creative agencies? Probably not. But assuming that we are all micro business pushing our wears onto the industry, the only way to keep ourselves in a perpetual state of newness, is to align ourselves an agency we believe in and mentors to shake us if we become stagnant!

I also have another idea… to be shared later J

Whats so scary about being tracked?

The idea of internet based behaviour tracking, is to many users, an invasion of privacy. With the introduction of new technology pioneered by the likes of Phorm, this concern over privacy is only likely to grow. What are we so worried about? I don’t think I do or look at anything particularly devious during the normal course of the day.

Or is it that people are worried that a few elite marketers (irrational, as behavioural tracking cannot identify an individual specifically and no personal data can be extracted) will know too much about us…But is it any worse than the hair dresser using a CRM programme to remember how you have your tea, the name of your partner or where you last went on holiday? Also I wonder how many have social network profiles, blogs, and YouTube these people have uploaded. 

We all openly give away lots of information about ourselves. In the same way brands have to realise they might not be interesting to consumers – consumers need to realise, or be shown that as an individual they probably aren’t that interesting to brands. This is obviously a catch 22.

But most of that isn’t the problem is it? In the UK (and probably the rest of the world) we like to feel as if we can’t be pigeon holed and that advertising cannot affect our behaviour… So when faced with highly targeted advertisements that we might actually find useful, we’re sent into a flurry thinking that we’re going to be tricked.

I for one welcome more targeted advertising; it might mean that Chrome won’t try and advertise to me when I’m already using its browser!

So our challenge as advertisers (as it’s the brands the consumers will see, not the advertising networks) to convince consumers that targeted advertising is a step in the right direction. This starts with making sure our adverts are more useful and interesting!

 

More information less analysis…

Information is a wondrous thing; Google demonstrated that recently with Project 10 to the 100th and it’s the perfect illustration that having all the information doesn’t necessary mean you have the answers.

This leads to a problem, we have more information that we could ever want but there is less analysis than we need to make informed decisions. People with facts are no more informed than a planner with an excel table of TGI data.

Those in marketing know, or at least should know, that we need to turn data into useful information and along the way find a few ‘truths’. But surely another part of our responsibility is to pass information on to consumers in a way that they can easily analyse it.

Over a billion dollars was spent campaigning on the US election, I wonder how much of it was spent informing votes rather than confusing them? 

Agencies pay an absolute fortune each year using the services of companies such as XTREMEADS. But with advertisers, and more often than not ordinary folk, placing TV ads on YouTube, Search “Cadburys gorilla”   and you’ll find 3500 posts of the ad in various formats and a few hundred spoofs…what does the future hold for those like XTREMEADS, or more importantly how will the development of YouTube, Flickr and any other free databases of adverts affect the way we in the industry look for inspiration and examples?

Is mass best?

Having dinner last night I was in the company of various entrepreneurs on one of those super exclusive private members clubs (as a guest i might add) One of the members just happened to be the chairman of one of the largest retail companies in the UK, his advice to the room of avidlisteners was as follows...

 

"Agencies might tell you different, but believe me, just get your message to the highest volume of people, TV does that"

 

Now this worked wonders for Original Source with limited budget and a key message; but surely it's not right to treat all communication that way.

 

It just demonstrates that there is still a need to educate brand managers and alike that brands are built based on the perception of consumers regarding the values, activities, products and indeed everything companies do. So if you want a brand spend the time becoming a part of the consumers journey, as a companion on that journey. That way you don't fall into being just another ignored one off campaign.

too late...

 beeker made the point yesterday that half the time this and that (being most things) has already been written, and possibly better than you did or could have written.

Being a young blogger / wannabe consumer planning insightful strategist person this has its advantages. I don’t know something… I hunt around the blogs…. I learn something… I form an educated opinion.

The problem then lies with what to write about. I wanted to talk about Choice. The likes of Seth got ther a year ago and Northern Planner 2 years ago.

So I’ll make this quick. Is Pauls Daniel’s overtly subliminal mind behaviour conditioning advert for Tesco the way to encourage the consumer to choose our brands? Surely he’s essentially just telling the consumer what to do.

Now I might be young but even I know that telling the consumer to do something isn’t the best way to build a brand!