Tuesday, March 10, 2009

User generated campaigns are only as good as the ideas behind them

Recent campaign launches from Samboy, Doritos, and Subway have stimulated quite a bit of chatter about the merits and downfalls of this style of campaign. Accusations of boring, lazy creatives, and scoring bigger agency resourcing budgets have been some of the criticisms levelled here.

I think these examples show a willingness to experiment, and to try something different.

But at the end of the day, this style of campaign is only as interesting as:

1. the idea itself - how compelling is it? what value does it offer?

and

2. the people you engage

and

3. the way you enable their involvement

and

4. the way they respond

Using social media isn't interesting. But ideas and people are.

Remember the whole world is your creative department. But give 'em something interesting to play with.

6 comments:

mikej said...

'Using social media isn't interesting. But ideas and people are.'

Halleluiah... I completely agree. Everyone concentrates on social media like the skittles thing. instead of great ideas that live and breath in social media

I did a post comparing two campaigns that a trade magazine that did a write up on

http://thingsdonotchangewechange.blogspot.com/2008/09/glastonbury.html

Nicole said...

It's funny cause I just watching TV last night and the "Dori-TOES" ad came on and I couldn't help but shudder. There are definately more effective ways to utilise the creativity of the public. I work in advertising and even the TVC's we create are better than that rubbish - and ours can be pretty awful! ;)

Anonymous said...

Boooooooooooooooring! (Not you Kate!)

Kate Richardson said...

I should hope so Matt. Especially since you've asked me to marry you ;)

Gavin Heaton said...

We are seeing some lazy thinking here - or perhaps no thinking. There is no innovation in strategy to be seen. No creativity in how the campaign unfolds. No story.

Until we start to really put some effort in and begin to dig into the potential of social media, we will be cursed with more of this.

I don't see the experimentation. It's just making an ad from another (probably cheaper) source. And at the end of the day, you've got to wonder, really, whether this will sell more stuff.

Farrel said...

love your blogs kate. Making me see the world in a fresh way.