In some ways, the Web makes a marketer's job easier. Like when consumers are enticed to create commercials and other marketing messages for them. With Web 2.0, as the "second coming" of the Internet
has come to be dubbed, consumers do all the work. And marketers, with all their control issues, are learning how to let them. It's called engagement--and increasingly, this activity means that
consumers create part of a marketing campaign. "Without having complete chaos, is there a way to have controlled chaos?" asks Rishad Tobaccowala, chief executive of Denuo, a new media unit of Publicis
Groupe. What happens when you let consumers recreate one of your ads, and they mock you? That's not good for the brand. But by turning ad creation into a contest with a payoff, sometimes you can
attract some pretty interesting stuff. Unsolicited brand use isn't always a bad thing, either. For example, a three-minute video on Revver, called "Extreme Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments,"
demonstrates the effect of putting candy lozenges into a bottle of Diet Coke to create a series of artificial geysers. The video has been viewed more than 5.5 million times. This was an unsolicited
use of both brands, but Mentos decided to buy an ad at the end of the clip. Why not? It's certainly not a negative use of the brand.
Read the whole story at The New York Times »
