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Are major brands out of ideas?
Posted by whoisthebaldguy • 8/24/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: Advertising, blog, butterfinger, contest, hp, ideas, sharpie, video, whoisthebaldguy.com
In the past few months I have noticed various brands launching video contests online. For example HP, Butterfinger, Crunch, Sharpie, and other major brands are reaching out to the every-day consumer to find the new genius ad campaign idea. Did we reach the point where we ran out of ideas?
User Comments
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At first I thought you were talking about clothing brands and I was so ready to COMPLETELY agree with you lol..but as far as the ones you mentioned I have not seen any of those ads encouraging others to present ideas but I am pretty sure you are definately on to something -
Hmmmmm....
I think those contests are just ways to get the consumer to spend more money with them.
Contests are ways to advertise and get people to spread the name via word of mouth.
Branding is a very important of marketing and advertising uses contests to create the impression that people are involved...
Which creates branding in the mind of the consumer.
Yes - they'd like a new idea - because marketing agencies charge phenominal amounts for ideas --- and if a consumer just happened to come up with a great idea for "FREE" - and all of the ideas become property of the company --- if they find a few hundred ideas for free - then - of course - GREAT!
But to be honest - they just keep the ideas on file - maybe using them without compensation - but the MAIN concept of these contests is to spread the branding of the product.-
I think so too. It just seems like a sneaky way to steal other people's genius ideas. I also think that the recession plays a role in things because even major brands no longer have the million dollar budgets to hire big ad agencies to come up with the next big thing. So they put up a $10,000 video contest and get their great idea THAT way.
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Actually the chance of a major company finding a "GREAT" idea in the general public is very slim.
MOST advertising that you see has been whitewashed through many processes:
Psychological elements
Geographics
Demographics
Etc. Etc.
Advertising is extremely difficult and is very scary, actually.
When a media company comes up with an idea - they take it through many departments which add their elements.
For example: When you see Tide - did you realize that it was specifically COLORED orange because the orange gave a feeling of "CLEANLINESS" "SPRING" "safety" and other things similar to that - including "TRUSTWORTHY"???
(which I've never understood why jailed inmates wear orange)
There is a lot involved in the advertising industry - including inducing Pavlovian responses in humans and more. It's actually very interesting.
Anyhow - the main concept was that - a simple idea for an advert by the general public would still need to have massive work done on it - and the idea would be so mutated by the time that they got done with it - that it really wouldn't be the original idea anyway... -
Nah, most user submitted advertisements you will probably only see once or twice, if at all. The advertising is within the contest itself. -
Ayuh TOP - exactly what I said. LOL! Except you managed it in 2 lines.
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Brevity over quantity, something that was pounded into my head a long time ago.
Btw, I didn't see your post until after I posted mine.
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I am not arguing that an ad campaign goes through countless stages of testing and approvals and is manipulated and controlled to its smallest detail. I am only pointing out the WHERE the initial idea comes from these days. It is just very obvious to me that brands are reaching out to the general public nowadays to find the next big thing. The advertising world is going through a major transformation since the birth of twitter and the boom of viral marketing. Just wondering where this will all go. It seems pretty messy and unstable right now.
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Rich over at CopyWrite Ink - covers some of this in his VERY informative business blog - if you haven't checked his stuff out - you should.
www.blogcatalog.com/user/Rich -
Thanks for the info! I'll take a look.
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