The Creative Alliance, Strategic Marketing, Interactive, Public Relations

User-Generated Content—Risk and Reward

Because many companies work tirelessly to build their brands, some are understandably reluctant to hand over the reins to, not their trusted brand strategists, but their own customers and potential customers in the marketplace. Fearing dilution of the brand, or negative positioning, companies shy away from accepting—and enabling—what’s come to be called user-generated content.

But think back for a moment to this year’s Super Bowl advertising bonanza. Three major advertisers, each of whom ponied up $2.6 million per 30-second spot, turned over the production of their ads to their customers. General Motors, Doritos and the NFL opened the door for people—anyone—to submit a video for use as one of their $2.6 million spots. To much fanfare and media attention.

Thus, the real success of these user-generated efforts is not the Super Bowl ads themselves. GM, Doritos and the NFL all had a guaranteed audience of 200,000,000 eyeballs just by paying their $2.6 million. The real coup was the pre- and post-Super Bowl hype they generated. Every major news show, business periodical, TV talk show, and radio news program has taken on this subject. The multiplier effect of taking a creative risk on user-generated ads has paid big dividends for NFL, Doritos and GM: they spent less money and are getting four to five times the visibility. That’s quite a return on the risk of allowing some control of the brand into the users’ hands!