Industry Professionals Discuss Consumer-Generated Media
Blogs, podcasts, video, online photo albums, social networks, do-it-yourself ad campaigns. Increasingly people are creating more content than "mainstream media" companies. Consumers are creating ads, editing existing ones and proliferating them over YouTube and other sharing services. People are gaining more control over content and even how a company's brand is perceived. Is this a good thing? Is it a fad? Can is be managed? Should it be managed? Should brands allow consumers to "co-op" their brand? Should everything be a "conversation"? Should we completely say goodbye to traditional, top-down brand management? Are brands jumping on the social/conversational bandwagon because they believe in it, it's the latest fad or they are just trying to appear cool? There's a lively forum discussion about this topic in our forum section. Check out the discussion there or give us your thoughts in comments.
Comments
As mediums change advertising will change and adapt, as it has as we moved from newspaper, to radio, to TV. IMHO the traditional marketing metaphore of "hunting", of target demographics, of shotgun/rifle messaging is dead. The new marketing metaphore is going to be more around "farming", cultivating audiences, seeding memes (good ideas).
Essentially marketers are no longer dealing with a "mass" of individuals, they are now dealing with a network of customers. The good news is that a network of customers is far easier and cheaper to communicate with, no longer do you have to reach each individual, the network of customers and prospects is a medium unto itself. In this medium of connected customers news and ideas travel far faster that you can possibly imagine.