Why trust you?
As this survey acknowledges the use of user generated content as a marketing vehicle might be a tad overrated, foremostly among younger people. That trust is a thing you earn and its not easily done. Hence you can’t not only rely on having non-professionals create your message and carry it to your audience. In many cases traditional ads created by professionals has a relevance and is met by a positive attitude. The most important issue concerning this is that you clearly communicate who you are and what your intentions are. For example I love the commercial embedded below, its professional, a little humorous and still is very obvious regarding who’s it from and what it tries to sell.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTU2He2BIc0[/video]
In communication its all about trust and I’m not sure I always trust other users on the sole basis that they don’t represent a company. And my thought on an alternative would be the Cluetrain manifesto and the thoughts that Tara, Jeremiah and Kathy are spreading, build a community and create a relevance for your product/service within that community.
Of course there are shortcuts. Instead of building a community or even produce user generated content. Steve Rubel presents three sites that in exchange for consumers time and participation gives back things such as frequent flier miles and free airtime. As Rubel notes this has an interesting future, as people are so in tune with commercial messages that if they would recieve something for their time spent looking on ads/polls/videos it would really be like getting stuff for free. And the power of freebies in all forms is not to be underestimated, hence it seems like a relevant proposal from companies to consumers and a solution to the pop-up window. I agree to watch the commercial and I get something in exchange for it. Great. Though not for companies in search of passionate users.
[tags]Cluetrain manifesto, Tara Hunt, Steve Rubel, Kathy Sierra, Tea partay, Vodafone, Passionate users, community, Smirnoff[/tags]
