Contests to make ads have become a popular way to engage people with brands online. In the United States, marketers for brands such as Doritos, Heinz, and Yahoo!, among others, have recently held competitions for the best consumer-generated commercial. But as The New York Times reports today, not every competition is smooth sailing.
According to the 2007 PRWeek/MS&L Marketing Management Survey conducted by Millward Brown, only 12 percent of senior marketers say that consumer-generated media (CGM) is very important to their marketing platforms. But three times as many, 36 percent, say that they are spending more on new media because they want to be innovative and ahead of the competition in executing the latest marketing trend. Commenting on the marketing world’s rush to an online future, Mark Hass, CEO of MS&L, suggests, “It’s fear both of the competition and of the unknown.”
The Malibu Banana Rum contest provides an example of why marketers should look before they leap into that unknown. The company offered a $25,000 prize for the best commercial set to the tune of “Banana Boat Song,” but the recent announcement of the winning entry led to an outcry from participants. The Times reported that there were a number of apparent contradictions between the judging process originally described online and the one put into effect, e.g., the winner was named earlier than expected, before any finalists were publicly announced. Accusations that the contest was rigged (which Malibu denied) were posted on YouTube and on Malibu’s own message board.
Commenting on the use of such contests, reporter Louise Story suggests, “these contests are often difficult to manage. And they do not always generate many entries — despite large cash prizes.” There were only 270 entries in the Malibu contest, and only 84 of those were eligible to be posted on the YouTube site.
It was just a month ago that Ms. Story wrote an article on the video contest sponsored by H.J. Heinz. That contest, which will continue to accept entries until August, offers a prize of $57,000 to the top winner, and five videos will receive a TV appearance. But Ms. Story reported that ad professionals who had reviewed the 300-odd submissions already on YouTube were dubious that Heinz could select any that they would be proud to run. (Apparently, many of the “creative” uses for ketchup in the entries are not conducive to creating an appetite.) Still another competition, held and promoted by Yahoo! for a commercial focused on environmental or “green” issues, has attracted only 130 entries (including one from our own Alex Tsatkin), even though the prize offered is a trip to Cannes.
The difficulties of managing these contests have been apparent ever since the Tahoe fiasco, when environmentalists tried to subvert that brand’s contest, but these recent stories draw attention to the limited participation inspired by these promotions. In the case of Malibu, it also seems that the losers’ sour grapes may cause the brand to lose more advocates than it gained.
In the world of blogs, there is a rough rule of thumb that for every person who frequently posts comments, there are 10 others that do so occasionally, and 90 more that just read the posted content. If we apply the same rule of thumb to the Malibu site - assuming 100 people visited for each one that posted a video - that adds up to 27,000 people reached by the contest.
Is that number really good enough to justify the time and money involved in hosting the contest? As noted by commentators on a previous post on this blog, reach may not matter if you successfully engage a few people. But, while the contest winner may well be more favorable toward Malibu Banana Rum, what about the losers? The Times quotes Debbie Lusignan, of Adams, Mass., as follows:
“It just looks like, wow, they rigged the contest, I am furious. I spent 60 hours on this freaking contest.”
If her reaction is representative, then I guess Malibu Banana Rum won one loyalist and lost several others.
Over the last year, pundits have been very eager to tell us that CGM is the future of advertising. Where, I wonder, does their conviction come from? Some may point to Dove’s viral ad “Evolution,” which took the Film Lion at Cannes this year. That may be one exceptional example, but what proof do we have that CGC produces a decent return on investment for brands in general? Maybe the 78 percent of marketers in the PRWeek/MS&L survey who are not eager to involve consumers in shaping their marketing programs actually have an eye on getting a return for their investment rather than the latest media fad.
OK, I have had my say. Now it is your turn. Is it only U.S. marketers who are shy of turning over control to their consumers? What examples of contests elsewhere in the world might confirm or deny my position that CGM can bring as many headaches as successes?
Tags: Millward Brown, Nigel Hollis, PRWeek, Consumer generated media, CGM, Malibu Banana Rum, Louise Story, Mark Hass
(18 votes, average: 2.67 out of 5)
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June 29th, 2007 at 3:15 am
Following the success of the Doritos CGC, other companies probably thought CGC is the way to go. I remember veiwing the entries that were submitted for the Doritos competition some time back and they were really good and professional.
However, the more recent CGC (Malibu and Heinz) seem to be really amateur. This shows that the CGC standards are going down and this could be attributed to the fact that consumers are not as excited about the recent contests as they were earlier.
What I beleive was the main reason for the Doritos competition to have performed very well was the novelty of the contest. And the novelty has started to die down. I don’t think CGC is here to stay.
June 29th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Hi Deepa,
So, like new forms of online advertising, you think novelty has “pumped up” the response (and hype) surrounding CGC contests like these? I can see that, even if I doubt CGC will go away. To my mind, it will find a niche in the world of marketing communications, for some products and some audiences.
Nigel
July 2nd, 2007 at 2:45 am
Hi Nigel,
I think you’re probably right that it will find a ‘niche in the world of marketing’ and I feel that brand fanatics will probably try to support their favourite brands most of the times. I recently read an interesting article - Brand Fanatics
http://www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=372#more
It pretty much says that many big brands which have a following will probably be suported by customers most of the time and I guess this is how CGC contests will probably have support ( although I feel after sometime brands will have to come up with something else to keep the interest going with their customers)
July 10th, 2007 at 7:23 am
Since when do we ask consumers to do our job? Hasn’t anyone wondered about this or is it just me. I don’t think we should be asking consumers to make ads but perhaps we should be asking them to comment on our ads, ideas, brand, product instead of making them. They should by all means contribute their version of the story but on their terms they are not paid creatives in an ad agency they are bored, cynical consumers. There are other ways I can think of to use CGM but asking amateur punters to make the ads is an unimaginative use of a powerful phenomenon.
July 11th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Speed, I could not agree more. The rare examples of good CGM ads, however, tend to make everyone feel they ought to be doing the same.