• by April 25, 2005

By Paul Parton

There's an interesting paradox in our business: brand-builders and advertising types tend to be passionate people. Passionate people get excited by new ideas. Unfortunately though, the person whose interest we're trying to capture with our new ideas  that stressed out, time-starved, non-technical consumer  is, more often than not, less excited than we are about ads, delivery systems, and new technologies.

It's a good reminder not to get too carried away in the glittery haze of new stuff. That said, an episode at The Brooklyn Brothers last month convinced me that consumers are becoming as entranced by citizens' media as the industry is. It all started on a Monday morning with a rash of fairly unpleasant e-mails suggesting that we get our collective slimy asses the hell out of the country. It was harsh, particularly given that the comments had been prompted by what we considered an act of selflessness.

The act in question was a commercial we produced for the United Nations, intended to raise awareness of children playing around unexploded land mines  a serious problem. As anyone with kids knows, when they start playing, they aren't particularly rational and can quickly wander into places they shouldn't be. It was an issue that was important to us, so we donated our time and a good deal of our money to produce a spot.

The idea was simple  that if there were land mines here, we'd be less likely to stand for them anywhere. The commercial communicated the idea provocatively by depicting a land mine exploding during a kids' soccer match in upstate New York. The only fiction in the spot was the location. Land mines kill 20,000 people a year. In some places, 85 percent of those are children.

So, we were a bit surprised when we arrived at the office bleary from weekend activities to find our e-mail loaded with hate mail from ex-Marines in Kentucky who didn't like the tone of our advertising. Our surprise deepened, but in a nice way this time, when the love letters started to arrive. Nakedly emotional letters from people who'd witnessed the horror of land mines firsthand flooded in thanking us for our humanity. There were others from those who simply appreciated attention being drawn to an issue they felt was important. But what surprised us most, was that the commercial hadn't aired.

In fact, the networks were steadfastly ignoring it in the hope that it might go away. Our Web site crashed due to the overload, so we upped our capacity, and it crashed again. We realized what was going on when the viral video producer at iFilm e-mailed saying that he'd read an article about the spot on BoingBoing. He kindly offered to link people to the commercial on his site in case we were getting too many hits on ours.

Although traditional media outlets declined to run the ad, the citizens' media took hold of the story and gave it air time. Hundreds of blogs linked articles about the commercial to sites that played it.

A cursory Google search came up with 125,000 results against a search for the commercial. All the top ones were blogs. iFilm alone counted some 75,000 hits on the commercial during one week. It appeared on AdAge.com and Adcritic simultaneously, not to mention the United Nations site. Our own site scored 11,000 hits in one day, a sizeable increase from our usual 84. None of which, of course, were paid for. And all of which were actively sought out and actively engaged with.

It would appear that along with the growth of citizens' media, a form of citizens' advertising has developed where media pundits actively run messages that have value for their readers  whether that value comes in the form of news, entertainment, or provocative content. It's like word of mouth on steroids.

As a consumer of citizens' advertising, I can see the value in it. It's a recommendation to look at something that comes from someone whose taste and sensibility I trust. It's easy  all I have to do is click on the link. And it isn't intrusive like annoying video files that clog up an e-mail in-box. It's a powerful combination, particularly given that the content isn't subject to the network broadcasting guidelines that conspire to edit the entertainment out of traditional advertising. This begs the question: Will citizens' advertising become more influential as traditional advertising diminishes in influence? It doesn't seem too far-fetched a notion.

Paul Parton is the brand planning partner at The Brooklyn Brothers, a creative collective. (paul@thebrooklynbrothers.com)