„A Web site is no longer a place where people can go and read stuff. It’s now a 24×7 marketing engine where people can interact with your brand, and you can, in turn, see what’s important to your customers.“ […] The biggest difference between the pre-bubble urge to have an online presence for its own sake and today’s online spending is the integration of a company’s Web site into the business strategy.
There is probably a hundred quotes like this on the net at the moment. We are, let’s face it, finally experiencing another boom of the digital media. Some call it „web 2.0“, or even „hype 2.0“, others might call it „solid business models“ or „broadband adoption“ – but in reality it’s one thing mainly: the user has finally adopted this medium in a way that enables us to reach a critical mass out in the webspace.
Online Advertising exists for more then 10 years now, but in the past one question always remained: why spend money on online advertising, if you reach only 20-30% of the population (or less). Of which only x% might be interested in you product?
This has improved. Now (in Germany) you have almost 60% online. You still have trouble reaching as many people as you will by radio, TV or Print (at least in Germany). And it’s much more fragemented. But it’s a darn lot cheaper, online.
And you also reach most of the people you will probably want to reach: those with a certain education and wallet-size. Because they are online, no doubt.
The digital space has grown vastly over the last years. I think we’ll certainly soon reach the tipping point, even in Germany.
Hot of the press, the NY Times has an article about the whole Chevy incident, quoting a spokesperson from Chevy:
A spokeswoman for Chevrolet, Melisa Tezanos, said the company did not plan to shut down the anti-S.U.V. ads.
„We anticipated that there would be critical submissions,“ Ms. Tezanos said. „You do turn over your brand to the public, and we knew that we were going to get some bad with the good. But it’s part of playing in this space.“
And further down they quote Drew Neisser of Renegade Marketing:
companies had such a strong desire for user-generated advertising that they were willing to accept the risks. „There’s this gold rush fever about consumer-generated content,“ he said. „Everybody wants to have consumer-generated content, and Chevy Tahoe doesn’t want to be left behind.“
Hey, it’s the new fad amongst marketeers! Not bad, this trend. I like these kind of campaigns anyway!
(Even though I can’t be moved to participate – yet!)
I hadn’t blogged about the new campaign of Chevy yet, in which they ask users to compile their own ads and put it up on their website. (There is a lot of interesting stuff out there in the „consumer generated media“ space and I am currently just collecting everything on delicious.)
Adjab and Adpulp now mention something that will always happen when you start a campaign like that and don’t check the ads before they go live on the website: There are a couple of spots that contain messages that Chevy is, most likely, not in favour of. These kind of spots will always appear in all sorts of places – even more so in the future, now that we have sites like YouTube and mobile phones that can film videos. But these happen to be part of the Chevy challenge, and they’re live on their website.
But there is one spot that could pose a problem to Chevy. Not only regarding their image, but also legally:
Like Snow? Beautiful landscapes? Be sure to take it all in now because…
Tomorrow this asshole’s SUV will change the world
Global warming isn’t a pretty SUV ad
It’s a frightening reality
ExxposeExxon.org
Tahoe� An American Revolution (source)
Now this one spot I am sure they’ll delete. I don’t think they want to get into trouble with Exxon. And they can without loosing their face, because in the rules it says:
or which might subject Sponsors or its licensees to unfavorable regulatory action, violate any law, infringe the rights of any person, or subject Sponsors or its Licensees to liability for any reason.
I also think it’s OK. It’s about Chevy and it’s target group. It’s not about any other brands.
Should they, however, pull the other ads that are negative about Chevy or SUVs, it will most likely have a negative PR effect on them. If they let people upload anything without prior control, they should stick to it.
I agree with Steve Hall: let’s hope the reason they left the videos online is their sense for the rules of the new media – and not just the fact that this happened over a weekend.
By now I also heard from some friends who actually do watch television regularly, that the Eric Cantona Spot appears on a view German stations – mainly the sports channels, of course. Sofar, I haven’t seen it myself, though.
Wo ich sonst so bin...