Slashdot Mirror
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?"'"
Oh no, the people in your free commercial didn't have perfect actors teeth. Welcome to the real world Heinz, what did you expect to get for free from amatures?
Perhaps the "free" part of it is to blame, maybe its more that people that make good videos don't like Heinz enough for make an ad for them?
I mean would you really spend your free time making a video for a ketchup company?
Indeed. I'm sure if Apple got that contest out, they'd get amazing submissions. But there's only so much inspiration and affection you may have for a bottle of ketchup.
The guys who thought up this contest didn't see that far I guess. Well, there's always a way out: hire one or more ad agencies incognito, produce 5 amateur-looking (but good) ads, submit them to the contest.. let those win and tadaaa!
Victory.
Small businesses that don't have much money to spend on marketing and advertising can really benefit from "free" advertising techniques (stuff like this). Large enterprises have usually only succesfully ridden free campaign waves when they had already been in place (e.g. diet coke and mentos). Its much more difficult than it seems.
That's okay, they clearly haven't watched the professional ads lately, anyhow. Most of them are complete crap, too. They send the wrong message, they have annoying sound and video, and they play way too often. I find it hard to believe this 'horrible' videos could do any worse than they already are.
Sending the wrong message is actually my biggest gripe about most commercials these days. Most of them try to show an 'average' person, but miss the mark end up at 'loser'. The end result is that 'product X is for losers' instead of their intended message. They even hit on this about the yellow teeth in the video, questioning if the message is that the bad dental hygiene was caused by their own product.
I'm not against commercials any more than I'm against movies or music. I'm against BAD commercials, movies, and music. Good commercials can actually be 30 seconds of humor, or awe, or heaven forbid, information you actually care about. (Cingular, Geico (old commercials), Apple.) The world is a bit short on awe and informative commercials, and I can't think of a single one now.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Correction: Why should customers do Heinz's ad agency's job?
It's a fair question, but unless people are just really really bad at calculating the odds of getting the first prize (likely), then people are probably getting their compensation in other forms. My guess is it's the same motivation that drives so many to try out for reality TV shows, or bloviate on Slashdot: the desire to be a little famous. I mean, it's not like there was this deep, vibrant well of grassroots ketchup-love waiting to be tapped. Especially for Heinz ketchup. Those wankers made a ketchup that took an eternity to pour, then tried to turn it into a selling point. "Why, yes! I'd love to spend more time installing the condiments on my burger than I do actually eating it! The anticipation just makes it that much better!" Complete waste of everyone's time.
I can see some products that would naturally lend themselves to this sort of contest. Some things naturally get people enthused. Portable music players. Burning Man. Certain popular web development frameworks. But ketchup? The commercials I saw all seemed to say, "I don't actually love the product, but it would be nice to get on TV."
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
My neighbor's teenage daughter just bought a nike T-shirt. Damm. If I was her, I would have charged them to wear it. She's just that age, and looks just right. Primo real estate for an ad - not only does she give away primo ad space, she actually paid for the priviledge to do so.
I told her there was no reason at all she should ever have to pay for ad clothes. She's doing them one helluva service just to wear the thing in public.
I asked her if TV stations paid Nike to run their ads?
Isn't it amazing how little we value our own resources - to the point we give it away - but value other's resources so much we will pay for it?