Another example of consumer engagement, consumer generated advertising – call it what you may. Cadbury’s Australia launched a campaign recently for it’s Picnic Bar. Picnic chocolate bar is made of nuts, wafer, chocolate, rice crisps and caramel – quite a mouthful. George Patterson Y&R, challenged its audience to eat a Picnic in the space of a :30 commercial break. People filmed themselves using mobile phones, webcams and handycams and then created their own TV ads using the website, It’s no Picnic.
The number of responses is usually linked to ease of participation, the equity of the brand and the fun aspect of the ‘act’ involved. This contest was made fun and easy by letting contestants choose one of 50 pre-recorded voice overs. Personalization was made possible by inserting your own name (they had a database of 1400 – in India one would have to a tad more than that!). Hence, the final product looks like a finished, professional TV commercial rather than an amateur home video. And importantly, the approved commercials were dispatched as and when they were created, with every ad airing once – creating a campaign of hundreds of individual spots.
Consumer creation of ads is not new. Doritos, Tide 2 Go and several others (Indica Xeta in India) have all done it. But the ease of creating and airing this campaign makes it appealing. Not to mention the excitement of consumers seeing themselves on national TV. A straight jacketed :30 spot will soon go out of fashion.
8 Comments
@bhatnaturally Do read: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2010/02/bus…
@bhatnaturally And have tried out similar stuff with at least 2-3 clients. unless its got a 360deg push…its tough to get nos.
@ekalavyab Yup, have replied to your comment.
Had tried out a similar campaign here in India for Bingo – where we managed to get around 50 videos.
Other companies have tried and failed. Tata Sky did this and hardly got any entries. Fastrack even after a massive TV campaign got disappointing results in their myEXbox campaign.
Even intel tried out 5note symphony – where the main videos were just the videos created to seed the campaign.
Ekalavya, thanks for the comment. Am not surprised at the low number of responses. In India, there are a few barriers for making ads – you need decent quality webcams, mobiles with video recording capabilities and so on. Plus, such campaigns require massive offline support through TV commercials.
True. Its still rare to find a co. in India which will give a 360 degree support to a pure digital UGC campaign. All forms of media pushing something culminating on the web.
I disagree that its because of the quality of webcams or mobile phones. Its got to do with the fun and ease of creating an output thats almost professional. Eating chocolate is easy nd fun and hardly anyone else has to get involved. I dont know how much fun it was for anyone who tried the Myexbox!
I thought kurkure had a good response with their family on a pack campaign. If CCD or Barista tried what starbucks did with users posting pictures – that might turn out interesting.
Sreekanth, as I said in my post: The number of responses is usually linked to ease of participation, the equity of the brand and the fun aspect of the ‘act’ involved. You are right, it is not only about quality of webcams, mobile phones.