09/24/2007 07:11:34 AM 
(1) 
(1) For example, Teresa Iezzi of Creativity is currently mesmerized by the production in the latest ads from Nike and Halo.
While lo-fi might be the dominant form on YouTube, agencies at least appear to be moving on.
So, was consumer-generation just a production technique for television commercials all along?
Was there ever anything deeper going on?
Most campaigns have token gestures to CG, but not much more.
In the product development space there seem to be the odd examples of marketers tapping into the creativity of consumers for new ideas, but this limited.
Are marketers just happy with the same old command and control formula and do they feel satisfied that focus groups and conventional research are the best ways of bringing consumer thinking to their business?
Are they scared of consumer ideas?
This all seems to run counter to the way the social networking model is developing. People are looking for dialog with other people and brands should be no different.
The killer application is finding a way to tap into consumer thinking and creativity through the social network, but to do it in a way that doesn’t involve classical advertising.
Agencies need to find a way to make this happen for their clients or someone else will.
Posted by Ed Cotton
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i think the trend cooling off has less to do with consumer ideas and more about realizing that when a client as big as Nike, or Converse, or Butterball, or anyone else has an open call for media, it takes an incredible amount of resources to go through all that, check it for inappropriate content, check it for team logos, check it for pranks and offensive language. people send in VHS tapes, want to be able to send in phone recordings and expect it to be usable for broadcast media. One of the best / most intelligent user-generated content sites i've ever seen is Dell's Idea Storm (http://www.dellideastorm.com/) users upload ideas, they're tagged, voted on, and the best ideas emerge naturally. not something you can turn into a commercial, but will provide the insights for where the user wants the business to go. which raises the question: is broadcast media really the best place for CG content, or is it where we pushed it before we understood it?