YouTube: How to win with User Generated Ads
Is User Generated Content a panacea? Need one even ask?
Nevertheless, Scott Karp headlines his reaction to a New York Times story on one particular company's foray into the User Generated Ad game with the "news" that "User Generated Content is not a panacea."
Of course not. THEREFORE, all the more opportunity for savvy companies to successfully differentiate themselves via WINNING UGC strategies.
Karp on the two definitive "things" that he says "media companes and marketers can (only) do" with UGC:
So while user-generated content may be “free,” sifting through to find GOOD content is not. As such, media companies and marketers can do one of two things with user-generated content:
1. Make a traditional time and resource intensive editorial effort to surface the good stuff 2. Let it run free in all its varied glory (see MySpace), and accept the mountain of bad that comes with the tiny peak of good
If Karp hails "the convergence of media and technology," why does he suggest such convergence is so limiting?
In fact, there are many, many ways for media and technology to converge in the deployment of UGC fueled advertising strategies. Saying there are but two means for media companies and marketers to play the UGC game is also saying that creativity, on the part of media companies and marketers, is NOT an option.
Creativiity, in fact, is the ONLY option precisely BECAUSE UGC is not a panacea.
By being creative with a YouTube UGC advertising initiative, KFC is winning in the User Generated Ads game with an ad developed for airing on American Idol, built from snippets of consumers' Web videos, called "Celebration":
"The idea of using consumer-generated content and putting together a bunch of unrelated videos to tell one story was so exciting we wanted to move on it," says James O'Reilly, KFC's vice president of national marketing, as reported by USA Today.
KFC lucked out finding Ricardo Skratch Charles of London, who is a KFC fan. He's seen in the ad's closing shot blowing out candles placed in a KFC bucket.
"We typed in 'KFC' at one of the sites," says Tom O'Keefe, chief creative officer Draftfcb in Chicago, the agency that made the ad. "That scene popped up."
What's more, using such content:
In 15-second ads shaves about 75% off the near-$200,000 average cost for such a commercial with professional video and can be made in about a third of the time.
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