It's that time of year when all the trade press begin to pick their agencies of the year. Mostly, the usual supsects - TBWA and Goodby - have deservedly done well.
But Ad Age threw a surprise and chose the consumer as agency of the year. Their reasoning was that they have become the most effective creators and distributors of commerical content.
Now, I suspect part of this was to give a kick up the ass of the industry that there are new forces in play. And it shows how mediocre most of our industry's output is. But I question the logic of this choice. Yes, Mentos saw some sales increase that they they put down to the viral coke/mentos video. But I see very little consumer content that seems to answer that old metric - did it sell stuff. And that is the difference between content and commercial content.
True. And here is another thought. It could also be as a response to Time's Person of the Year (You). How glaringly obvious would it have been to not pick up on something that uber-mainstream Time magazine would have noticed? Would Ad Age picked consumers if the Agency of the Year award came out before Time's Person of the Year?
Posted by: MBarr | January 08, 2007 at 09:24 PM
IN IDEA EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS AND INSERT 'YOU' INTO ANY COMMUNICATION MATERIAL
It's the easy way out and the brands that use this sort of message in their communication, rarely seem to demonstrate it in anything other than their ads.
"It's All About You"
"Your Fragrance. Your Rules"
"Everything We Do, We Do It For You"
No it isn't ... no it's not ... no you don't.
Posted by: Rob @ Cynic | January 09, 2007 at 04:45 AM
Agree with all those comments. It's also arrogance on our part. We believe that people want to interact with [us and our] brands on OUR terms and in OUR media. they don't. no one thinks in terms of ads outside our indsutry. consumer-generated content is bullshit. yeah, the converse campaign from butler was great. but it was created by artists and folks trying to break into our industry, not by "consumers".
Posted by: alex w. | January 09, 2007 at 04:37 PM
Surely, it's not a question of one or the other?
Posted by: James Cherkoff | January 10, 2007 at 04:37 AM
It isn't james, but sometimes I feel you need to take the other side of the pendulum swing. I think - to adopt a Richard Huntington-ism - that we are tending to overestimate the importance of UGC in the short term and underestimate it in the long term. And I believe at the moment while there is some interesting content out there (often made, as Alex points out by people trying to 'break in' rather than everyday people) there is very little good user generated commercial content.
Posted by: Gareth | January 10, 2007 at 04:44 AM
It's about bringing all the available tools together. CGM certainly isn't a silver bullet and there's a lot of hype at the mo' - but it is a real shift. When you say there is very little 'good' user generated content, it depends what you mean. Do you think this is 'good'?
http://www.bazookadanceblog.com/
Posted by: James Cherkoff | January 12, 2007 at 05:23 AM
I mean good as in commercial James - I think this where we differ
Posted by: Gareth | January 12, 2007 at 08:56 AM
No, I don't think we differ. My understanding of good is very much about the bottom line. A decent percentage of Google's astonishing financials are from attaching adverts to CGM.
Posted by: James Cherkoff | January 12, 2007 at 10:50 AM