Many digital marketers are opting not only to listen more attentively to what consumers are saying about their brand, they are also providing opportunities where consumers are rewarded for innovative ideas that promote corporate needs.
This is nothing new – getting shoppers and employees to come up with name, slogans, essays have been popular for a long time. After all, countless minds working on a problem are better than a mere few. Now, with the increase of larger retailers employing social media to market their brands, consumers are challenged to produce ideas, inventions and content, and the stakes are getting ever higher.
User Generated Videos & Web Content
I blogged a while back about Best Buy and their partnership with MoFilm to ask consumers to create their own Best Buy branded “true stories” videos. YouTube has proven that user generated videos can go viral to an extent that corporate made videos cannot. Take for example the Dr. Pepper Tay Zonday Chocolate Cherry Rain video – 7,988,016 (and counting) people have opted into watching this Dr. Pepper “commercial” on YouTube, all their other commercials get a fraction of this traffic. Best Buy and Dr. Pepper are not alone in promoting user generated content. 3M, Doritos and Tourism Queensland have all achieved fairly substantial successes with their own user generated content contests. A recent Forrester report states that companies in the travel, food, entertainment, fashion, and retail verticals gravitate to such campaigns.
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