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March 16, 2006
Chevy Tahoe campaign: Not CGM
Chevy is running a campaign, launched from the previous night's Apprentice, inviting website visitors to create their own commercial for the 2007 Chevy Tahoe.
The site features pre-recorded video clips that can be annotated with a user's own words. Those elements are mixed together with one of eight music files that ultimately assembles a short commercial.
Some marketing blogs are calling this "consumer generated media."
Calling it CGM is rather generous. I disagree. It's really a game. To wit: Participants submit their finished commercials to win prizes.
The finished "commercials" -- which are assembled using standard car-ad imagery and music pre-selected by Chevy -- hardly fit the CGM rallying cries of consumer control. Nor are the finished videos posted for community comments or votes. The commercials cannot be distributed beyond the campaign website, so the notions of widespread viral distribution via YouTube or Google Video are dashed. Everything, except the copy, is all very much under the control of the Tahoe brand manager.
In all fairness to GM, this dawning age of citizen marketing is virgin territory. Any campaign by a big company into these waters is bound to loudly sink or swim. But should companies wish to engage their evangelists by inviting them to create multimedia love poems, they would do well to free participants from ponderous limitations. Converse, Vespa, and even the rock group Nine Inch Nails have nicely demonstrated some of the potential of true customer empowerment.
Customers who love products will go to extraordinary creative lengths if provided with the right invitation and forum for demonstrating their genuine affection. Given the opportunity to raise their own personal status, many will leap at the chance to demonstrate their affection with a product they love.
Some customers don't even need an invitation, like 19-year old Minneapolis teenager Tyson Ibele who created this remarkable ad for Sony.
So let's call this Chevy "create your own commercial" campaign what it really is: a viral game. It doesn't provide the Tahoe-loving customer anything more than the opportunity to create digital graffiti set to music.
I'm guessing that Chevy's overt desire for control is one reason why it is limiting viewership to its own website. But the libertarian nature of freedom will always take root: It seems any SUV vigilante could create an anti-Tahoe "ad" like the one below using the campaign system and upload it to YouTube anyway. (RSS readers click here.)
Technorati Tags: GM, Chevy_Tahoe, Consumer_generated_media, YouTube, Citizen_marketing
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Darn these blogs! You just pre-empted my a key message in my upcoming ClickZ column. It hard to disagree with you, and I strongly believe we need to draw important distinctions between types of CGM; between organic and incented, aided and unaided. In the case of the GM program, this is clearly "incented" consumer-generated media (iCGM)" and the marketers has taken quite a few steps to "prime the pump" before the consumer even lifts a finger. Eventually, if every brand starts doing this, we might need some form of "disclosure" policy (not unlike WOMMA's ethics code) that helps the recipients of such messages vet out organic from incented messaging. But for now, I say give the marketers some slack to test the waters and even take pride in the fact that they ceded a wee bit of control to the consumer. How often does that happen? Who knows where this will lead...
Just catching up on this debate -- a good one. The core here is "natural CGM" vs "stimulated CGM" (I used the natural vs stimulated concepts when I wrote about WOM at Forrester). It's great when you get natural CGM from a George Master (the Apple iPod guy) who is willing to spend days, hours, weeks of his time. But that ain't gonna happen very often. Those of us graphically-challenged types need some raw material to work with, so if they marketer wants to provide some footage to get us going, so be it. However, you are right this is just a contest, not that much different than the old "tell us in 25 words or less your adventure in a Tahoe" of days gone by. I guess I'd call this a stimulated WOM campaign using a lite CGM-for-the-rest-of-us approach as the stimulus to spread the word.
I probably should have viewed your video before my first post. As a tree-hugging, Prius-driving, solar photovoltaic kind of guy I loved your supers. But it also struck me that the submissions will be a great source of consumer insight for them. First: the Tahoe running through a field of flowers: I'm sure the creatives thought this was a really cool image, associating the Tahoe with the beauty of nature, yadda, yadda. I'm with you: it reinforces the image of SUVs as destroying the planet. Oops. And they really will need to count up how many of the videos reference global warming vs freedom-to-go-offroad/macho power/and whatever else they think they are associating the brand to.
Jim,
Thanks for the comments. I love your observation about how the submissions might be a good source of consumer insight. I had never considered that.
Let's not only focus on it from a brand POV: it's ultimately about the consumer/ end-user/customer, etc.
Ultimately, consumers don’t always separate "content" and "media" from each other or think about it in the same way we do in the biz. To them, it's a chance to have a say in the brand, if even under its watchful eye and control.
The 'Tahoe' and 'Priceless' consumer-generated spots are really safe moves from large consumer brands with proven campaigns. There's no real risk here, since they have a library of previous spots to compare the consumer versions against even if the submitted versions are bad.
Brands may risk taking a small PR hit by negative comments, but if they're willing to display the good with the bad, this honesty can only help the brand in the minds of the consumer, no?
And, is a negative comment about a huge grill logo really going to prevent people from buying an SUV if they really want one? I suspect people will nod in agreement that the logo is huge, but still make the purchase anyway.
For my money, it's still not consumer-generated content OR media in its purest form though. That can only happen with consumers creating 100% of the content and putting it in a place and time of their choosing, NOT the brand’s.
Terms seem to be interchanged quite freely lately, but there needs to be a distinction:
CG media is how and where it's displayed/viewed while CG content is the actual work itself.
Really, the target audience for this vehicle is not going to be into this marketing approach. The people who have time to view this and play with it are people like me: web savvy people in advertising who hate their jobs, are sick of being marketed to, and will take every opportunity to subvert something like this into something funny/a political statement/ anti-marketing. how much do you want to bet that 90% of the "ads" don't do what "they" want? I only saw this because a freind did an ad that was politically minded, as her brother is being shipped to Iraq. http://www.chevyapprentice.com/view.php?country=us&uniqueid=906c46cc-1237-1029-98eb-0013724ff5a7
Oh yeah I really really want one NOW
http://www.chevyapprentice.com/view.php?country=us&uniqueid=72bddc44-13a9-1029-98eb-0013724ff5a7
Here's a few more:
www.twostandshoutcomics.com/twistblog
Or rather....
http://www.twistandshoutcomics.com/twistblog
Hi! I just wanted to let you know about this site for everyone to be able to submit and rank all of the commercials everyone has created.
So far we have 100 ads that are submitted, and things are heating up.
I think it'll be interesting to see which ads end up on top, and track the evolution of this phenomenon.
Right now, the server we're using is barely holding up because of the traffic, but hopefully it'll stay standing.
Please help me spread the word and participate in this democratic activity by voting on/submitting videos!
http://heavyonthechevy.crispynews.com
I think the lame Chevy/Apprentice website is a little more than a game (given the free usage of text) but it's so tightly scripted that it's close. It's sad to see the Chevy execs spinning it now as if they knew this was coming and that they are secure enough in their brand image to allow this. Check out my post at:
www.neurothetic.com
Looks like they're not allowing negative ads to go up...can't even send to a friend anymore...all the while, the PR spin is all about "we're comfortable with this campaign". Well...some people are just using the site to create the negative ads only to put them up on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_ljcsJQIo4
GET A LIFE! Step away from the computer and find a legitimate way to change the world and I don't mean your world in the computer. It is a Contest linked to a brand. Nothing new there, or send Kellogg 25 cents and get your very own free corn flake bowl! (1960's)
You are no different than people who find loop holes and profit from it.
You saw an opportunity to create what you hoped would be negative buzz and actually made the site even more popular! yeah that worked!!
CGM? Really?
