• by August 23, 2006

The Internet used to be the wild, wild West. Bumperdumper.com was the hidden bomb in the network buy--and the clients went crazy. They didn't want their brand to be associated with a product that was for going on the go.

But what about the visitors to Bumperdumper.com? The Bumper Dumper® was meaningful to them. Maybe they were researching camping supplies. Maybe they were just having fun. The point is, that visitor pulled that content and wanted to see it.

No one really refers to the Internet as the wild, wild West anymore. Every now and then you hear about a big brand intersecting with a tiny controversial site. Adware and spyware have such a bad rap that whole businesses have had to change their entire models. Spending in the industry is gangbusters, so everything is humming along just fine.

Enter the explosion of consumer-generated content--and I'm not talking personal home pages on Geocities. Bloggers talking about their escapades of last night, young artists posting their music for everyone to hear without the help of a label, people submitting their definition of insanity at Wikipedia--who's watching them? This is CGM, this is the next big thing, this is the long tail. So how is this different from a guy selling a hitch mounted portable toilet?

Welcome the New Authenticity! Marketers now are starting to see that CGM is a real opportunity to reach consumers, even if it stings every once in a while a la Chevy Tahoe. Agencies are starting to use viral tactics in their new biz pitches. Online ad networks are forthcoming about the 1,300 sites on their lists. More and more destinations on the Web are becoming legitimate.

Consumers have always visited second- and third-tier sites, which are authentic and relevant sources of information. If these sites weren't useful to consumers, they would be gone. They just don't have million-dollar trade marketing budgets to make sure they're top-of-mind with buyers. They don't have the "cool" factor with the industry, even though a million or more consumers in your target audience may be spending hours there per month. So that inventory goes to a network--and all of a sudden, becomes suspect.

That kind of thing really doesn't make sense anymore. We need to be more open-minded about what consumers are really interested in, versus what we as marketers think our consumers are interested in. It is a tender trap, thinking that everyone thinks like you. And for a marketer, likening yourself to your target audience is even more dangerous. You know how you feel about diapers as a 25-year-old man, and how you consume media--but I can assure you, busy moms are not logging in to check their fantasy team five times per day.

Consumers are continually redefining authenticity and what really matters to them by the media choices they are making. In the online world, we must embrace this and have a little faith that the medium is the message and that the consumer made the choice for the medium, so the message that accompanies it is OK, too. Online ad networks and other arbiters of this inventory are redefining their authenticity, too. They are well positioned to help marketers reach these consumers as they spread out across blogs, video download sites, community sites and the like. We need their aggregation skills to reach these folks more than one at a time. How else are we going to get the long tail?

I hate camping, especially primitive camping, so I'm never going to need The Bumper Dumper®. But if I'm trying to help an advertiser sell long underwear, BumperDumper.com may be just the site I need on my plan.

What do you think? Are we ready to give the New Authenticity a chance?