Just a quick thought- I’ve been hearing and reading stories of marketers that are having problems conducting user-driven campaigns. A lot of this confusion seems to stem from the fact that companies are treating people like unpaid creative directors, and are expecting them to create :30s or print ads around products, and then fret that the results don’t accurately reflect the brand. Some of the thinking on this has been along the “You get what you pay for” line of thought, but I actually think that is secondary. Question: When was the last time you filmed a :30 to tell a friend what you thought? Or created a large visual with compelling copy? Users don’t speak in ad units, but the expectation is that non-traditional creative will be carried by traditional media, which is a large part of the disconnect. Most videos on YouTube aren’t :30 seconds long for a reason- people are done when they’re done, and though 99.9% of what is created is of middling/poor quality, it is far more genuine. The trick lies in loosening the creative restraints, and looking at vehicles that users are comfortable with already, not just in terms of media, but especially in format.

The recent deals between Google and DoubleClick and Microsoft and aQuantive have placed a lot of attention on the top and bottom of the classic marketing funnel(Awareness -> Consideration -> Shop). The massive amounts of display inventory that the networks bring to the search engines has raised the possibility of integrated buys that follow the consumer from when they first realize a need for a product all the way through to the actual shopping phase. What these deals and the theoretical buy leaves out, however, is the middle. What appears when a person asks a community for their thoughts on a purchase or looks for more information online is more often than not a peer’s opinion. Similarly, the top links in a search result will often be a Wikipedia entry and peer review information. This community-generated content is viewed with more credibility as it is often based on real-world experience. While that is not news (hopefully), one needs only to look at the top of the funnel to see that most/all brand creative is focused on creating an emotional connection with an individual instead of starting a substantive conversation with a community. We monitor millions of conversations from film to pharma, and do you know what no one talks about online? How a brand makes them “feel”- they instead address how a product works for them. Until agencies and marketers address this, all of the efficiencies and data generated by these deals will fail to address the most powerful input for a consumer, Word-Of-Mouth.

Funny or Die, a Will Ferrell-fronted comedy video site, has received plenty of coverage around its launch, more around his involvement and their intro clip, “The Landlord” than around the user-contributed content, which has been more tepid. That said, there is an onslaught of theme-based video-sharing launches, based around humor, non-profits, tech, etc., which brings up a familiar scenario- What if the audience that YouTube has aggregated fragments right as marketers finally figure it out? The struggles that agencies are going through trying to adapt creative to the online video platform will only be compounded when assets will have to be adapted to different formats, channels, tagging systems, and communities in addition to figuring out appropriate length. Clearly many of the start-ups around today will not be around to witness this additional shift, but as marketers focus on the “what?” in a message, they should also be anticipating a much more complicated answer to the “where?”. Oh, and the same thing is happening to social networks as well, but I’ll save that for another post.

Our CEO, Pete Snyder and Project Manager Kaitlyn Wilkins co-authored a great piece in iMedia Connection today. Dealing with the media’s questionable use of social networks after the Virginia Tech tragedy, it raises some very hard questions about appropriate use of people’s online information. A good read on a difficult topic, and hopefully it will cause people to think twice before making public personal profiles in the future.