Yes it is entertaining and yes it has become relevant culturally BUT did you ever stop to think if it adds value to a product? Does it help promote the brand, the product and its message? Did you ever think “Why are marketers (the professionals) allowing users to to do their job for them?” Is user generated content making us dumb, is it dumbing down the brand and the process of marketing to a simple entertaining video that has nothing at all to do with the brand? Are users really qualified to make these decisions and ads for brands?

I have been pondering these questions for days now and often wonder if user generated content has had any great impact on the world of marketing. Has it really given is a truly fresh perspective or has it dumbed things down to the point where marketers don’t have to put any thought into what they make any more because they are outsourcing it to the users. Sure, they “pick the winners” but couldn’t they have come up with a better idea, I mean they are the professionals or is it that marketers have run out of ideas or aren’t creative enough to come up with some of the stuff that users do. Are marketers having trouble thinking outside the box?

Sure all the user generated videos of people mixing diet coke and mentos made both of their sales go up about 14% in one month when this craze was at its height. But you need to ask yourself was this intended? If just generating sales was intended then it did its job. If getting people to USE your product on a regular basis and consumer retention was your goal than I am afraid that they lost out. People were just buying this stuff to try what they saw on youtube. Does this add value to the brand? Well, thats very arguable but I would have to say no because it wasn’t getting the brands message across, it wasn’t saying that diet coke was better for you or that mentos freshens your breathe, it was just saying “look what these two products do together” and I think it was a negative message because people will see this chemical reaction happening and think twice about putting it into their body. Now, I am not against user generated content and I actually enjoy most of it, I think alot of good ideas come out of it and it gives alot of talented people a chance they might not otherwise have. I just don’t think we should come to rely on it. It should become part of the marketing repertoire and not marketing.

And Finally:

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 at 4:56 pm and is filed under marketing, Entertainment, social media optimization, pepperjam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.