The CGV Game: Consumers Generate Videos, Happiness, and Headaches For Brands

With more and more companies launching consumer-generated video initiatives, you have to wonder if brands like playing follow-the-leader or if they can make a genuine marketing case. hawthorne direct's Founder and Executive Creative Director Tim Hawthorne identifies five ways to monetize these efforts, and suggests that a contest's design can itself play a role in its impact.

Hawthorne Videoactive Report: August 14, 2007
By Timothy R. Hawthorne

The CGV Game: Consumers Generate Videos, Happiness, and Headaches for Brands

Consumer-generated video (CGV) is hot because it combines two Web 2.0 favorites: user-generated content and online video. Though some marketers question this medium's utility, CGV has gone mainstream. But how should advertisers use it?

Five Ways To Monetize

The most popular way to use CGV to make money is the ad sales model. Content sites use real world videos to build traffic; higher traffic enables higher ad rates. Other sites host video intended as advertising. Video classifieds, for instance, span local newspaper sites to national portals such as eBay and RealPeopleRealStuff.

Other companies use consumer video as complementary sales tools. These range from small businesses' camcorder walk-throughs to TigerDirect linking to product demonstrations on YouTube, effectively expanding its catalog info. Consumer reviews offer a fourth way to make CGV pay. According to Socratic Technologies, 36 percent of U.S. shoppers named Expo TV's VideopinionsTM more influential than typical product research channels. Consumer reviews count, so companies are establishing social networking hubs so customers can extol sponsor virtues.

The CGV marketing ploy that most consistently captures the public's imagination is the ad contest. Consumers participate to win cash, a national broadcast, or both. The brands generate buzz, and -- when lucky -- get pretty good ads for a song.

High Risks, High Rewards

Embracing CGV is a rational move for advertisers. Consumers discuss your brand anyway, so why not put that passion to use? At the least you project product confidence and a willingness to accept the public as partners. At its best, your unofficial brand ambassadors handle your word-of-mouth marketing, perhaps triggering a strong viral impact.

But contests carry risk. Many consumer videos simply won't sell, and the clunkier efforts cheapen your brand by association. The bigger risk is that contests open the door to doubters to paint your brand with unflattering strokes. Chevy suffered this fate when SUV enemies posted gas-guzzler slams in its Tahoe SUV contest.

Regrettably, attempts to minimize backlash result in uninteresting video. Dippin Dots and Taco Bell have deterred flagrant abuse by limiting contestants to pre-set elements -- and also eliminated the possibility of innovative breakthrough creatives. The most effective controls seem to occur on the thematic front. An Oreos contest that invites groups to sing its brand-friendly theme song leaves little room to stray from a positive message. A second tactic employs consumers as talent, but leaves the production to professionals. That's the approach in the My Town My Hardee's campaign, where the (seemingly) unscripted content engages interest, and the high-end production makes it watchable.

CGV advertising requires a bit of a balancing act. If you're going to jump in, you must accept a little bad as the cost of the good. But if you have a good product, your risk is quite minimal. After all, products and services that can't inspire brand ambassadors shouldn't be on the market in the first place!

Timothy R. Hawthorne is Chairman and Executive Creative Director of hawthorne direct inc, a full-service DRTV and Digital Interactive ad agency founded in 1986. A 33-year television producer/writer/director, Hawthorne is a cum laude Harvard graduate and 2006 recipient of the ERA Lifetime Achievement Award.