May 26th, 2007
User-Generated Content Is Not A Panacea
The Infinite Monkey Theorem (which now has an official name, thanks to Wikipedia) states that given an infinite amount of time, a monkey banging on a typewriter will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. I suppose Wikipedia has proven this true for encyclopedias, but advertising agencies that have open-sourced the ad creation process to consumers have found that they may not have the time to wait for those monkeys to create the next Clio award-winning ad, much less an ad that doesn’t suck (via NYT):
Consumer brand companies have been busy introducing campaigns like Heinz’s that rely on user-generated content, an approach that combines the populist appeal of reality television with the old-fashioned gimmick of a sweepstakes to select a new advertising jingle. Pepsi, Jeep, Dove and Sprint have all staged promotions of this sort, as has Doritos, which proudly publicized in February that the consumers who made one of its Super Bowl ad did so on a $12 budget.
But these companies have found that inviting consumers to create their advertising is often more stressful, costly and time-consuming than just rolling up their sleeves and doing the work themselves. Many entries are mediocre, if not downright bad, and sifting through them requires full-time attention. And even the most well-known brands often spend millions of dollars upfront to get the word out to consumers.
Here’s an example of a user who generated some content for Heinz:
This video is actually kind of funny if you are connoisseur of the intentionally lame slapstick YouTube aesthetic, but probably not ready for prime time. You may be wondering why I didn’t just embed the video here for your enjoyment — well, that would be because they turned that feature off. Heinz wouldn’t want users running off with their content, would they? That’s because the user really isn’t in control.
UPDATE
Turns out the Heinz videos all coexist on standard YouTube pages with the embed feature enabled — it’s just disabled on the Heinz branded page. You have to click on the video title from the Heinz page to break free of the controlled brand environment and return to the user-in-control YouTube environment. So here it is for your enjoyment:
Here’s the thing about user-generated content (other than it being on the face of it one of the dumbest buzzwords ever) — users are people, and people vary wildly in their talent. Heinz may end up with a brilliant commercial that they might not otherwise have discovered, because there are some brilliant people who are aspiring video content producers but who don’t currently work for a big ad agency. Open platforms like YouTube have certainly make talent discovery a more open and “democratic” process, which may indeed reduce the amount of undiscovered t
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Yesterday evening there was a presentation from Prof Eric Von Hippel, MIT Professor and author of Democratising Innovation and this morning a breakfast chat with Karim Lakhani from HBS. I spoke to the Prof about the
Your choices leave no choice at all. Of course both are happening. Heinz or any other company, will have their own processes and decide the end-result that way. And any creative process is surrounded by a mountain of crappy ideas.
Still, an interesting blogpost, thanks! It would be interesting to see what the reasons are for some user-generated commercials being good and some awful. Is it to with push-factors, i.e. the background of the creators, professionally or otherwise? Or with pull-factors, such as passion for the product or good direction from the company? Or just random luck?
By focusing only on the finished product, you’ve overlooked the other, less tangible, benefits of a ‘user-generated’ content campaign. Heinz, Doritos, Pepsi - they’re billing themselves as corporations of the people - allowing the user to participate in the creative process is sending a message that they value the input of the consumer.
And those who do create content are getting more involved with the brand than they otherwise might.
I agree with Doug. You’ve made some excellent points, and I think that the likelihood of getting a real, high-quality ad out of the masses is a crapshoot.
And yet, I’m wondering how effective the ad promotion effort is, itself. They did make a dumb mistake in not giving more free access to the videos, more easily (I’m sure someone in the bureaucracy got scared and put on the brakes).
I’m still skeptical about it- but if there is some genuine loyalty to interest in the products among their customers, it could build that awareness.
I can think of worse things than millions of people seeing dozens of mediocre ads created by the customers. Who cares if anyone of them end up shown during the Superbowl? How effective are Superbowl ads, anyway, unless they are for snack foods or beer?
What do you think?
Doug/Mark,
I agree that there is value in “users” showing their devotion to the brand, regardless of whether they have any talent for at production. Still, one wonders whether some of those “brand devotees” are more interested in the content than Heinz.
I don’t think the entries as a whole is without value — it’s that you either have to be in the mode embracing it all, come what may, or doing the hard work of filtering it.
[…] Nevertheless, Scott Karp headlines his reaction to a  New York Times story on one particular company’s foray into the User Generated Ad game with the news that “User Generated Content is not a panacea.” […]
I argue that you can’t buy customer evangelists, even through Youtube and cashola as your weapons.
You have to really love it to really sell it from a customer perspective. Click my name for my blog post on that.
I agree Scott..
“one wonders whether some of those “brand devotees†are more interested in the content than Heinz”
Expanding on Doug’s comment…
The goal should *never* be to seek out ‘user generated content’ - it should be to help coalesce the community of interest around what you do.
That is of course, if what you do is something that attracts a community.
(which now has an official name, thanks to Wikipedia) states that given an infinite amount of time, a monkey banging on a typewriter will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Source: Publishing 2.0 Author: Scott Karp Link: http://publishing2.com/2007/05/26/user-generated… Techmeme permalink
[reposting a comment I’ve made elsewhere on this campaign]
I’m sure the response of the work-for-nothing gurus will be: “Company, you needed to HIRE AN A-LISTER, to show you the right way to do it!”.
The idea isn’t that the company puts up a fence and people just come by and paint it. Instead, the company gives painting-evangelist Tom Sawyer a big consulting contract, since “Painting Is Conversation”. And he goes around saying “Professional painters need to be knocked off their elitist perch! LET’S SHOW THEM *CITIZEN-PAINTERS* CAN DO IT! Working for free will ring in the new era of community fence-painting”. And then he appoints a few of the bossier power-trippers to be “administrators”, to watch over the rest, and sends out the most deluded to talk to the media that “we’re here to do abstract art”.
*That’s* the recipe for unpaid labor, I mean, “user-generated content”.
I partially agree with Karl on this, that starting a campaign like this should focus on creating a community around your users. However, I belive in wisdom of crowds, and I think there is no harm in seeking user-generated content. If filtering through them is too painful you could even “crowd-source” it back to your users
now has an official name, thanks to Wikipedia) states that given an infinite amount of time, a monkey banging on a typewriter will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Source: Publishing 2.0 Author: Scott Karp Link: http://publishing2.com/2007/05/26/user-generated… Techmeme permalink [IMG] Share This
Scott, as others here mention, you seem to have missed the point that crowdsourcing of content as Heinz has done here is less about trying to get an ad made on the cheap (although that may be a benefit) and more about connecting with a community that are passionate about your product.
It’s these “sneezers” (to quote Seth Godin) or Connectors (to use Malcolm Gladwell’s near-equivalent) that will adopt new versions of your product early in the piece and get the message out to the next wave. It doesn’t so much matter that the crap-t0-gold ratio of what they produce is high. It’s that they are producing and in doing so, also communicating their passion to their circle and so on outwards.
It’s the social in “social computing”. All about people. All about community. All about collaboration.
Stephen,
Yes, I understand it’s “all about COMMUNITY,” yadda, yadda. Plenty of Kool-aid here.
My point was not to overlook the value of community, especially around deep passions like ketchup (have you seen the Ketchup groups on MySpace and Facebook?), but rather that it’s just as hard to get high qualtity content from user-generated as it is from traditional means, even if that happens to be a secondary objective.
Also, if it’s all about “Coummunity,” why did Heinz disable the community features like comments and the embed link on their YouTube site? Somehow the hype doesn’t always live up to the practice.
But no worries — drink up. Next round of Community-Aid is on me.
User-Generated Content Is Not A Panecea » Publishing 2.0
[…] User-Generated Content Is Not A Panecea » Publishing 2.0 “users are people, and people vary wildly in their talent… while user-generated content may be ‘free,’ sifting through to find GOOD content is not.” (tags: internet socialmedia ugc advertising marketing) […]
hrm. i’m not so sure it’s really making evangelists of these “crowds” as it is spreading the word — virally.
for every single person who makes a commercial, there are 10 that don’t. and EVERY SINGLE ONE of these people talk about the idea to someone.
maybe they sit around and brainstorm with their friends. maybe they actually make a commercial. maybe they keep talking about the time they had an idea for a heinz commercial.
sure, it’s all about the content and not necessarily the brand, but, the brand is inextricably tied to the content and the creators urge to create.
whether they are talking about:
1) the money they’d win
2) a cool idea they had
or
3) the fact that they made one and are foisting it on every single person they see.
in every single one of those conversations, the brand — heinz, will be mentioned.
enough to be worth $57k? hell yeah. look at the response they’ve had so far. they might even get a decent commercial out of the gig too.
which, when it aired denoted as a “fan commercial” would start the whole conversation thing (points 1, 2, and 3 above) all over again. possibly with a larger, more mainstream audience depending on when they air it.
any way you slice it, it’s all good for heinz — “quality” commercial or not.
m3mnoch.
“have you seen the Ketchup groups on MySpace and Facebook?”
brahahahahahahhhahahaah
Seth, I’m sure you’re right, that Heinz has probably already received a few overtures from people professing to be able to show them how to ‘do it right’.
Here’s the thing, sometimes a contest is just a contest.
And it looks like a success in terms of the buzz it’s generated (it’s gotten us talking about Heinz ketchup right here on this blog) and the fun people have had in participating in it.
[…] As a commenter said on Ryan Sholin’s blog, this definitely falls under the heading of “Free Lunch — isn’t one, etc.” If any of the advertisers quoted in the New York Times story were told by a “Web 2.0″ advisor that they could somehow outsource ad production to “the crowd” and wind up with something just as good as what they produce in-house, then they should sue. But I suspect they weren’t told that. They may have wished that was true, but if wishes were horses then beggars would ride, as my mother used to say (actually, she still says that). Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 has more on the subject. […]
2 - User-Generated Content Is Not A Panecea » Publishing 2.0
[…] of the rest • The cost of user-generated content • News media wild for widgets • US local TV websites gaining on newspaper sites • […]
As the Linux lot say, it’s only free if you put no value on your time….
http://publishing2.com/2007/05/26/user-generated-content-is-not-a-panecea/
to TechCrunch - it’s gotten better as of late - gotta give credit where it is due.) Deep Jive Interests: The Trouble With “The Decline In News” Has Nothing To Do With Journalists Dare Obasanjo: Why Facebook is Bigger Than Blogging Publishing 2.0: User-Generated Content Is Not A Panecea Chris Daly’s Blog: Readers to the rescue? Doc Searls: Because paper is scarce. And so is time. Mathew Ingram: Doc Searls is dead wrong on newspapers Kent Newsome: News in an Accelerated World Rough Type:
[…] is a social networking website dedicated to user-generated content and global connectivity. At its heart is the individual user, who creates a profile and then […]