Sony, MasterCard and Home Depot are the latest Fortune 500 marketers to enter the CGM marketing bonanza. The Detroit Free Press reports today that these companies are using consumer created advertisements and promotions to help combat growing resistance to mass market advertising.
"More and more consumers are choosing what messages to receive with video-on-demand and opt-in e-mails," said Roger Adams, Home Depot's senior vice president of marketing. "We want to allow consumers a chance to vote on what they receive in mass media as well."
It looks like Al Gore’s new gig is paying off. Sony Electronics, Toyota and L’Oreal Paris are asking viewers of Gore’s Current TV network to produce original TV spots for their respective brands. Current TV viewers are a great target for this kind of CGM marketing effort – they already produce enough content to fill 30% of Current TV’s on-air broadcasts.
"In effect, we're allowing our consumers to tell us how they want products sold to them, not the other way around," said Mike Fasulo, Sony's chief marketing officer.
Meanwhile the Church of the Customer Blog has an interesting claim about big brands on YouTube.
“Are you the brand manager for a well-known and popular product? If so, go to YouTube.com right now.
Go ahead. We'll wait. Now type your product/company/brand name into the search box. Chances are better than even that something about your company will turn up.”
And Time Warner is taking a new approach to development of its next network. It’s developing a channel that would offer viewers on-demand access to hit shows from broadcast networks such ABC, CBS, NBC, and even competitor Fox. The new service would allow content producers to reach consumers who are ‘time shifting’ TV viewing.
"It's just another outlet for customers to do time-shifting," Harrad said. "It wouldn't necessarily substitute for and could complement DVRs (digital video recorders)."
These programs from big brands and mainstream media companies are just more evidence of the growing momentum behind the on-demand economy. The question is: when will consumer generated become the “norm” and mass marketing the exception?
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Advertising, CGM, Citizen Marketing, Marketing, Social Networking, YouTube, Web2.0
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