Free Ads Can Be Really Expensive

An anonymous reader writes "Companies are finding that this 'Web 2.0' user participation thing sometimes isn't all its cracked up to be. The New York Times reports on the efforts of big companies to harness consumer enthusiasm for assistance with advertising. Heinz, for example, is running a campaign asking users to submit videos using their product in inventive ways. The problem, of course, is that most of the submissions are utterly terrible. The result is a headache in terms of quality control and making use of the turned in submissions. 'Heinz hopes to show more than five of them, if there are enough that convey a positive, appealing message about Heinz ketchup, he said. But advertising executives who have seen some of the entries say that Heinz may be hard pressed to find any that it is proud to run on television in September. "These are just so bad," said Linda Kaplan Thaler, chief executive of the Kaplan Thaler Group, an advertising agency in New York that is not involved with Heinz's contest. One of the most viewed Heinz videos -- seen, at last count, more than 12,800 times -- ends with a close-up of a mouth with crooked, yellowed teeth. When Ms. Kaplan Thaler saw it, she wondered, "Were his teeth the result of, maybe, too much Heinz?"'"

Comments

why no direct link to the ads?

[anagama]

Sure, we can all RTFG, but the blurb really should include a link to all the videos.

A few good links

[Nymz]

There are too many crappy ones, so here's a few that are less crappy.

The Cute Kids - 23
The Girlfriend - 42
The Fisherman - 45
The Punster - 62
The Ketchup Pass - 65
The Wrestling Brothers - 67
The Dog Food (animated) - 72
The Rappers - 79
The Ninja Kids - 126
The Dirty Joke - 208
The Behind the Scenes - 241
The Hot Hot Hot Girl - 291

Re:So every YouTube video is Oscar quality?

[owlnation]

Not only that, but the product they are using is flawed as well.

And not only that - but food and product photography is as hard as it gets photographically.

It is a highly skilled niche job that most professional photographers and cinematographers do not know how to do. You need to know how to get the right colors, temperatures and lighting to make food look like food. Often it's just faked too. For example, most whisky bottle shots you see contain tea, not whisky, because real whisky photographs to look like a bottle of urine.

Re:Subject matter

[kd5ftn]

I recently competed in a similar advertising campaign with Chipotle. The difference is this: Chipotle opened theirs up to film and advertising schools, making it a competition with a financial incentive. I'm not sure what Heinz is offering or who they opened it up to. An average Joe who's not familiar with advertising or video production isn't going to make you an amazing commercial. Anyway, my team's Chipotle commercial was the best, winning $20,000 for us and the school.