September 14th, 2006
Are “Users” Who “Generate Content” Receiving Equal Pay for Equal Work?
Frito-Lay is tapping a new “agency” to create the ad spot for their $2 million Super Bowl ad spot — consumers:
Do-it-yourself ads will move from Web promotions to the biggest stage in advertising with the airing of the first homemade commercial in a Super Bowl.
Frito-Lay on Thursday will invite consumers to enter their own 30-second ads for Doritos in an online competition, with the winner broadcast during the Feb. 4 NFL championship on CBS.
The consumer ad will vie for viewer attention with some of the fanciest professional commercials. Marketers lavish huge budgets on Super Bowl ads after spending millions to buy time because the game remains the most-watched TV program.
Doritos marketers will choose five finalists and the makers of the top five all will get a trip to the Super Bowl. Online consumer voting in January will help pick the winner — which will not be announced before it airs unedited during the game.
So finalists get a free trip to the Super Bowl, and the winner gets the deep personal satisfaction of seeing their ad on the Super Bowl — which could of course lead to a financial return from actual paid creative work.
But you have to wonder whether the winner of the Frito-Lay ad contest would prefer receiving the millions of dollars in creative agency fees that Frito-Lay otherwise would have paid.
It’s one thing to leverage the previously untapped pool of brand enthusiasts who might be capable of producing ads that are as good as or better than those produced by “professional” marketers. It’s quite another to try to take advantage of consumers’ willingness to do this work for free.
You have to wonder how long this willingness will last.
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s book The Tipping Point. Most mature open-source groups have a small core of paid staff, which he calls a “maven trap.†Interesting idea. Scott Karp writes about another case of user-generated content here. Technorati Tags: Digg, kevin+rose, social+networks, Web2.0
Would have paid? You don’t think this was an agency’s idea?
What Noah said.
But also, think of the exclusionary and arbitrary nature of the ad agency world.
The smartest, most creative people ARE NOT there. And therefore those that are the smartest and most creative will do what it takes to get noticed.
The real question becomes, what happens to Madison Avenue in the near future?
Noah,
I’m sure you’re right, which only makes it worse — if the agency makes as much as they normally would have, but doesn’t have to do any of the production work…and the final cut on the ad is going to be done by consumer voting…it’s really a great scam.
Brian,
For now what Madison Avenue does is offload the work onto the backs of “the smart and most creative” consumers and then take credit for the whole thing…nice work while it lasts.
There definitely is a scam aspect to it, although someone has to build the tools, promote the idea and filter through the entries. That’s not to say Frito-Lay couldn’t do that themselves, but I wonder if they’d have any interest.
Like most things, it looks like Madison Avenue is just becoming another platform.
As I’ve said, when you see a phrase like “citizen journalist”, replace it with “unpaid freelancer”. For “user-generated content”, try “suckers working for free”.
Of course many of the Big Heads love the concept, and present it as the greatest thing since the lotteries were invented. They’re the ones getting paid (or at least hoping to get paid).
[…] Are “Users†Who “Generate Content†Receiving Equal Pay for Equal Work? 0 View Edit Comment/Tag […]
Why suckers? Most of these people are going to be making videos anyway… they just happen to love doing the work. They don’t look at it as a job or work… just something they like to do… like reading a good book. Are people who spend weeks on War and Peace suckers?
Mix in the opportunity to be noticed… maybe even make some money… start a new career… and this is pure enjoyment. I just don’t see who loses in this whole thing. Just because Frito-Lay decides to use a production method that lets them spend less for their Super Bowl spot they are evil? Hobbyists who get acclaim and noterity for something they would have been doing anyway are suckers? Huh?
To Michael Turro:
To “start a new career” doing what, creating television commercials? Ha! That’s funny.
Michael,
Did you see this in the article?
Creating thirty second videos about why Cool Ranch Doritos are so great based on an agency bried is hardly “something they would have been doing anyway.” It’s contract work. They’re just paying people with attention. Why? Because they can get away with it.
Is it evil? No. My point is that they probably won’t be able to get away with it for very long because the top talent is going to realize that they can and should get paid.
What’s wrong with paying people with attention? Under certain circumstances attention is more valuable than cash… and (as you state yourself) it very often leads to financial benefit. It is the individual’s right and responsibility to decide what value it may have in their personal situation.
If a brilliantly talented person has no resume, or is a student, or a hobbyist with a knack, or an agoraphobic who just can’t make it to an office, or is mired in one of a million other possible scenarios, I would be willing to bet that that person isn’t sifting through offers and parsing the terms of contracts. Still, that person wants a better life… recognition, whatever. So what do they do? They take a shot in the dark. For anyone outside that situation to label them a “sucker” because they make a decision that works for them seems wrong to me.
And to say that companies like Frito-Lay won’t “get away with it for very long” is to say that at some point we’ll have a meritocracy in which all the best talent in any given field is known and there will be no brilliant people toiling in obscurity. I just don’t think that will ever happen… there will always be a pool of talent that for some reason never gets tapped in the traditional sense.
Publishing 2.0 raises the issue about a Super Bowl ad campaign Something to think about, given how many news sites, from the Cincinnati Enquirer to Newsvine, exploit free content contributed by readers.
“To ’start a new career’ doing what, creating television commercials? Ha! That’s funny.”
Chas.-
Funny?
What’s funny about someone who exhibits the kind of creativity that can differentiate their spot from thousands of others getting work in the advertising field?
[…] The Insidious Dangers of Faux Commons. Talking about the big question that arises from user-created content: how long will users keep generating content that financially benefits someone else? Scott Karp has some thoughts on this, too. […]
Discussion: Jaffe Juice, Publishing 2.0 and cgm
I have to agree with Michael Turro on this one. To give anyone with an idea an equal shot at getting the exposure and connections that comes with a superbowl commercial is truly an opportunity. Let’s just say that I create a commercial, and I end up winning the contest. There are two points here: 1. They are paying an ad agency. The agency is most likely intimately involved, and this was there idea that they must sheppard through from now until the Superbowl. So the company already has this expense up front. 2. I did not spend years learning about advertising, getting the right connections, slowly working my way up the ladder, and finally arriving as just one member of a team of a large ad agency where a huge consumer company can entrust its brand. I am just one guy who happened to get a break. To pay me the same fee as an ad agency is not necessarily a given here. For instance - if the New York Times held a contest about writing a cover story on the topic of the convergence of media and technology - would you feel cheated if you wrote the article, won the prize, had your article and name on the front cover of the New York Times, but did not receive the same salary as their regular writers? Its not about the money, and I think it is besides the point to argue that without the contest these people would not have thought of making a doritos commercial. Would the people on reality TV have eaten bugs if there wasn’t fame and fortune after that last bug? In the end it is an opportunity. If you don’t agree with the rules of the contest, you don’t have to enter. You can simply spend years and years working to attain the level of stature that would allow you to be in the position of being on the team that creates a superbowl commercial. Which is more fun - a lifetime of work in order to work for Frito-Lay - or having some fun with your friends and a video-camera with a potentially huge payoff?
Enough with the troll headlines.
Scott, why do you think Frito-Lay is “getting away” with something? I see nothing here that leads me to believe firms are looking to replace their existing ad agencies with an army of Mechanical Turkers, and a silly contest doesn’t sound new at all. The only difference is the stakes (Super Bowl placement is a big deal) and your implication that Frito-Lay is hoping to switch to an all-contest advertising model. The willingness to enter such contests will last as long as there are filmmaker hopefuls looking for a way into a competitive field. Are the Flickr users who volunteered their photos for the Nikon Stunning Gallery “suckers” as well? I wouldn’t volunteer mine, but people have all kinds of motivations besides a regular paycheck in a chosen field.
Basically, what Michael Turro says.
Michal, first can you please define “troll headline” for me? Second, “sucker” was Seth Finkelstein’s term, not mine. Third, where did I imply that Frito Lay is hoping to switch to an all contest ad model?
To everyone, Michael Goldhaber argues that we are moving towards an attention economy, where money will no longer be necessary. Maybe so, but we’re not there yet.
I mean “troll” in the sense that you’re trying to get a rise out of readers by intentionally punching up a non-story to create drama where non exists. I unsubscribed from Nick Carr’s site a while ago because he had made a sad habit of pushing the same buttons.
I’m not interepreting this contest as a user-generated content situation at all: one ad will be chosen for broadcast, unlike the volume at a Flickr or Wikipedia. Advertising contests have been around for decades. When I was 17, I entered a contest sponsored by K-2 to design a snowboard, and it seemed like a pretty good deal: send in some drawings, maybe get to see them in stores. Where’s the news?
You’re right that “Sucker” was Seth’s word, but your post implies as much when when you say that contestants are being taken advantage of. You also imply that this is a long-term switch when you ask “how long this willingness will last?” Why would it matter how long the willingness will last, if it’s just another one-shot ad gimmick? Marketers are in the business of thinking up new ways to drum up attention. This year it’s viewers making ads, next year all of their potato chips will be hexagonal.
What isn’t mentioned, and maybe should be, is that there is a long tradition of push & pull between design clients and actual, professional design firms on the subject of speculative work. Industrial designers derisively call them bake-offs, and UK agency Minale-Tattersfield fought them tooth & nail 15 years ago during the recession. These are legitimate cases of designers being taken advantage of through systemic pressure to work for free, and they’re a much bigger deal than one make-an-ad contest.
Michal, would dispute your objection strongly. The very essence of being a sucker is falling prey to emotional manipulation against economic interest. That’s why I used that word. It is actually a fairly objective assessment. To deny it because the emotional appeal results in them making the choice, is to beg the question (i.e. “You’re being manipulated” “If manipulation works, how can you criticize it” - because that’s the aspect being criticized by definition).
The argument substitutes a conjecture benefit for cold cash. The fact that is usually overall considered a bad trade is shown by how much work has to be done to try to divert people from looking at the core of the argument, by insisting one not consider whether the contest is being used in a way which drives down the returns for the submitters versus the benefits of those wanting to use a contest rather than simply hiring someone.
Indeed, the basic principles are not new. They’re very old. So I’ve been harsh in description to try to draw attention to that historical pattern.
Most new commercial directors produce three self funded spec commercials before they have an opportunity to sit down with an agency, any agency.
Assuming the winner wants to be a commercial director, the opportunity that Frito-Lay is offering is far more valuable to that person than a large paycheck.
Anyway, those huge sums are paid to the production company, not the “auteur”. While there is plenty of money for everyone, most of the millions is spent on the production. Companies like @radical media and Moxie are operating on a 15% margin.
If someone’s getting hurt by this, it’s not the content generator, it’s the dp’s, grips, make up artists, truck drivers, sound engineers, set builders, sound stage operators, and thousands of other folks who make a living in the industry.
I’m not saying that it’s wrong of Frito-Lay to do this, in fact I think it’s a good idea, but let’s be clear about who’s actually losing out. It’s not the guy in his basement who spends a week getting stoned and making a Doritos ad with his friends.
Michal,
Do you not find the discussion that has ensued here interesting and instructive? I sure have. Same with Nick’s posts. When I write a bland post that echoes what everyone else is saying, no one shows up to discuss and I learn nothing. Apparently enough people, including you, found the question I posed in the post title sufficiently interesting to weigh in. Were you aware of the information that Adam Elend added to this discussion? — I sure wasn’t, but I’m really glad he stopped by. Call it trolling or whatever you like — I find it hard to believe that a topic that elicited this kind of response is a “non-story.” Personally, I think Nick Carr is one of the most interesting and provocative thinkers in the blogosphere, and that when people call him a troll they really mean stop writing things I disagree with all the time — that kind of ad hominem smacks of Bush/Rove administration smear tactics, and I think it’s a load of horse hockey. And I am trying to get a rise out of readers — what the heck is the point of having a comment section if all you do is strive for echo chamber blandness? I’ve found blogging to be most worthwhile in instances like this where 100% of the post’s value ends up being in the comments.
Seth, I completely agree with what you’re saying, but I think you’re omitting something important: the mere fact of an ad contest is part of the advertising. This is not a simple trade of spec work for pay work, for two reasons.
First, I’m guessing that the resulting ad will be released with plenty of fanfare and press releases about how Frito-Lay is “breaking the mold” by accepting consumer-made ads. The same wouldn’t be true for an ad directed and produced by an agency, so there is an extra element of publicity that draws people to see what non-agency creatives can come up with. This aspect of the campaign would not exist if Frito-Lay simply commissioned an ad.
Second, as others have said in this thread, producing spec work and taking great personal risks to get noticed are par for the course in advertising. It sucks, but it’s an assymetric attention environment: there aren’t many clients with pockets as deep as Frito-Lay’s, and there is exactly one afternoon-long show every year where the attention paid to advertising rivals that of the event itself. The winner is risking a relatively small amount of effort (desktop video is cheap and easy these days) for a chance at the equivalent of an Oscar.
Lotteries don’t attract economically rational actors either, but it sure is nice to be the guy holding the novelty oversized check.
Scott,
I definitely have the discussion worthwhile, so there’s that. I’m posting for the fourth time on this thread, and am greatly enjoying it.
Your question is a leading one, though, because there is nothing like equal work here, and this advertising campaign is not an example of user-generated content in the Web 2.0 banner-ad eyeball volume business plan sense of the term. It’s a “Have you stopped beating your wife?” kind of thing. =)
It’s unfortunate that you assume that you need to get a emotional rise out of readers in order to get some comment-section flow, because this tactic hurts discourse in the long run. If you’re going to be bringing up Karl Rove, I’ll point out that Rove’s signature tactic is to disseminate emotionally hot accusations (”Ann Richards: Lesbian?”, “John McCain: Black love child?”) in order to get some voter-flow on election day, even if it means destroying the possibility of reasoned debate (see paragraph 5 here).
Ultimately, this is why I got fed up with Nick’s writing. He’s undoubtedly a smart guy, but his occasionally insightful post was being drowned out by status fueled, traffic pumping trollings of the worst sort. I don’t know what he’s been doing lately, but I just hit a point where I imagined him obsessively reloading Technorati for an hour after every post, watching his rankings grow, and had to leave.
Your choice is not a binary one between flame wars and echo chamber blandfests. There is such a thing as productive argument without emotional tittie-twisting. Mentioning that speculative work has been a thorn in the side of creative professionals since before the web isn’t particularly sexy, but it’s necessary background for this topic.
[…] Exploitation or opportunity? “Frito-Lay is tapping a new “agency†to create the ad spot for their $2 million Super Bowl ad spot — consumers. So finalists get a free trip to the Super Bowl, and the winner gets the deep personal satisfaction of seeing their ad on the Super Bowl — which could of course lead to a financial return from actual paid creative work. But you have to wonder whether the winner of the Frito-Lay ad contest would prefer receiving the millions of dollars in creative agency fees that Frito-Lay otherwise would have paid“ […]
Scott Karp asks the question you’re going to hear a lot going forward: Shouldn’t the creators of user-generated content get paid like the professionals? That’s a great question with a not-so-simple answer. As I’ll explain later, I don’t think the answer is yes or no, but
to create the ad spot for their $2 million Super Bowl ad spot — consumers: Do-it-yourself ads will move from Web promotions to the biggest stage in advertising with the airing of the first homemade commercial in a Super Bowl. Frito-Lay on Thursda. (more) k k (more) Guaranteed Customers For Life - Kevin Donlin shows you exactly how to get life-long customers so you can stop wasting money on advertising.
I think the title is a loaded question, and part of the answer lies in this statement:
“But you have to wonder whether the winner of the Frito-Lay ad contest would prefer receiving the millions of dollars in creative agency fees that Frito-Lay otherwise would have paid“”
While user-generated anything is the lastest flavor-of-the-month tactic, it’s different than what Doritos is doing here. Sure, they’re basing their contest on a user-generated spot, but it could be anything for this contest. Submit a poster. Send an essay. Whatever.
Doritos is running a sweepstakes here. That’s why they have the rules and regs prohibiting entry by even their own agency peeps.
True user/consumer generated doesn’t wait for, nor does it need a contest or a prompt by a brand – it just does it. Snakes on a blog anyone? Then, the brand takes notice and goes, man, where did that come from? We gotta be part of that!
I think the implication of the title to this column is still an important one though, but again, the distinction between what that is and what Doritos is doing here needs to be made. As quoted, the winner won’t be getting the true agency compensation of a creative fee and kickback, oops, I meant commission on the typically huge media buy of the Super Bowl.
Because if we’re talking about one day having brands accept true consumer-generated anything, then that’s the day brands open up the submission of ideas to anyone for anything, making it a creative free-for-all, including agencies.
We’re not there yet by any stretch. Right now, agencies are still controlling 100% of the appearance of user-generated, the growth of YouTube notwithstanding.
And I beg to differ with the idea that there are no creative people in agencies. Please. Let’s put everyone in America up against all the agency people, about 70,000 vs 300,000,000. Stacked odds but I think agency creatives come out on top, call me crazy.
Because another thing that needs mentioning is that agency creatives aren’t free to just do what they want. They have limits placed on them in terms of maintaining a brand image, client mandatories, standards and practices on TV to deal with, etc.
Now, while this could absolutely be agreat shot for an aspiring director or creative person, still, think of the top 10 commercials you remember most or love. Then tell me what ‘viewer’ made them. That may change after this Super Bowl, but for now, that answer is still zero.
So while cousin Fred in Allentown, PA jumping off the patio with a lit patio umbrella may be totally awesome for that Budweiser spot, you can bet some 23 year-old junior creative already presented it and got shot down by his creative director.
The “good exposure” argument works for the prominent academic journals, it works for YouTube, and it has worked for America’s Funniest Home Videos since fourteen years before YouTube existed. The Publishing 2.0 blog frets about whether people who contribute to Frito Lay’s new campaign are duly compensated, but the contributors get a shot at the most exposure in all of US media. Just this past Sunday I got an email about
Perhaps I can shed some light on this opinion from the “user” end of it.
Hello, I was part of the team that created DUCT TAPE, a current top five finalist in the Doritos Super Bowl Commercial contest. We’re honored to be in this position, as first time TV commercial makers we’re up against some pros… and we’re asking people to please support us by casting their vote for DUCT TAPE at http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com — thank you for blogging, I enjoyed your post about the contest. Joe Herbert.
http://www.jumpcut.com/view?id=79EA4040802C11DB8702266C9A2E700D
My brother and I trying to get into filmmaking, without education or experience, and have been teaching ourselves through reading, research and actual experience. The Doritos commercial was our second project, and we’re very grateful for the opportunities this could bring. We love Doritos, and we are thankful. I think it’s great for people, and the prize for us is getting one step closer to our dream, and you can’t put a price on realizing your dreams. I really enjoyed reading this blog entry and everyone’s comments.
I hope you’ll consider a vote for DUCT TAPE!