Crowdsourced advertising – the reality behind famous examples.

The Superbowl has yet again been a large show off for TV ads. Even though some argue that the quality of ads has been lower than the previous years, one thing stuck out again: the spots not produced by a typical „Madison Avenue Agency“. Two Doritos spots, allegedly created by consumers, a Google ad produced internally,

NY Times hence wrote an article with the catchy title „Do-it-yourself super ads„, subtitle: „be afraid, Madison Avenue. Very afraid“. The article mentions the user generated spots and their „ranking“ on hulu.com and twitter, deducting that consumer know best what consumers want to see.

Well, that’s only one part of the story. And shall we say: the badly researched part of the story.

AdLab busts that story by stating a few facts that the NY Times should, in fact, have researched.

The first Doritos spot „Underdog“ was created by Joshua Svoboda a 24 year old, who works as a creative director. The second spot „House Rules“ was created by a writer/director from Hollywood.

Even the other Doritos commercials from the previous years plus other „UGC“ clips were apparently created by people already working in film related businesses, states the above mentioned article.

So it wasn’t brand fans or advocates who put in their efforts to create a brand message for the brand they like. It was creative people, producers, writers, who were probably more interested in promoting their own „brand“ through the PR associated with the clip.

It’s not really that surprising. However, the fact that this has not been picked up by the media correctly is suprising. In a way, I also fell for what might be the reason for the whole ignorance: the story of consumers creating ads with only a few hundred Dollars production costs, that are shown during the Superbowl with a mediabudget of more than $2.5 million, reaching more than 100 million viewers – it’s too good.

I work in an ad agency, so I shouldn’t like the idea of consumer generated ads. Yet due to my interest in social media marketing I did in fact like the idea. (And with everything connected to the setup of the contest, there would still be enough scope for agency work…) So it is rather disappointing to find out about the truth behind these famous examples.

The secret success of Second Life.

In a blobpost by Leander I was linked to some statistics published by emarketer.com about the growth of Second Life in the last 3 years. It’s amazing to see how their user base has grown round about 30% since their „hype“ in 2007, and time spent within the world increased by ca. 20% during the last year.

In terms of money: the economy of Second Life has also greatly increased. The amount of money changing hands has increased to $567 Million!

That sounds like Second Life is slowly gaining ground, however this time without the hype that diluted their numbers. Now that all the hype seeking geeks, journalists and other curious cats have left „the building“, Second Life grows their natural user base, who ever that might be. It would be interesting to get some stats on their user base, anyone have a hint where to get that?

Waving or buzzing – Google’s new Buzz.

So Google has launched „buzz“, which is a social network simulating extension to GMail, if you ask me. You can share photos, videos, status messages – and people can follow your profile, see what you share and comment on it in real time. Apparently. I haven’t found anyone yet to „buzz“ with.

It’s supposed to be an attack on sites like facebook or tools like twitter. I just wonder, if it is strong enough to get people of these two other services. They are quite sticky already, especially facebook, since they’re offering lots of functions, games, content upload options, etc. – and quite many people have established their network on facebook, it will take some persuading luring these network-settled people over to a new network.

Anyway, how does that align with Google Wave? Will they integrate the two at some point? Or will Buzz just be for sharing, chatting and connecting while Wave will be more about real collaboration? We’ll see… And see this video here, it explains the main points in less than 2 minutes:

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(UPDATE: here is another good take on the whole launch, including the relation to Wave.)

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Book a flight on Oceanic Flight 815 if you want to get lost.

I am badly hooked on the series „lost„, as I wrote in my German Blog already. The sixth and supposedly last season started yesterday in the US (the parts are available in Germany always one day later), however in the last couple of days / weeks a few marketing gigs have already taken place. Such as this one: you can book a flight on Oceanic 815 from Sydney to L.A. on kayak.com – for a horrendous price, of course. Quite a nice idea!

(via adverlab)

Ad Land Circle Creative Spot

This is a real challenge for ad experts. The following video is a huge collection of TV spots. It was made as part of the launch of the new identity of the Creative Circle awards in the UK. As adverblog writes, there are more than 78 spots referenced in this single video. Or, at least, that’s the highest number found so far. How is your score? (Mine is pretty bad)