[Browser-blogged – may be mistakes]
I heard some buzz about a movement toward customer created ads. It started with MoveOn’s Defeat Bush Ad contest, back in 2003. This one comes from Current TV, a national cable and satellite channel dedicated to bringing your voice to television.
Here’s the video, produced by 19 year old Tyson Ibele and the original news blurb I learned about this from.
An Agency’s Worst Nightmare: Ads Created by Users – New York Times:
IT all happens in 24 seconds. Like a souped-up Transformer robot, a silver Sony stereo rapidly deconstructs, then reassembles into the shape of a flat-screen television. The television then converts into a DVD player. The DVD player to digital camera. The camera to portable PlayStation.
The animated spot is the latest television commercial for Sony Electronics, but its creator is not a technology wizard at either of Sony’s two advertising agencies. The commercial is the work of Tyson Ibele, a 19-year-old from Minneapolis who won a contest on the cable network Current TV for its first viewer-created ad message; it will run for the first time today.
What’s cool about this is that we are beginning to recognize the creative potential of ubiquitous new media tools, like digital cameras and sophisticated audio/video editors. It’s only one reason why it is so important that, at the same time we continue to teach students how to effective consume content, we also need to be teaching them to produce compelling content. Stretching the Long Tail.
I just received this clarification from Danny Robashkin at MAKE.
I’m just running around doing some damage control due to the misrepresntation of some websites and newspapers such as the NYTimes.
They do not seem to mention that Tyson is the Lead animator here at MAKE, and that the Sony spot is a MAKE project. It would be fantastic if you “tweaked” your post to include a mention of the studio that created the spot.
Image Citation:
Ibele, Tyson. “Style Sony Spec.” OurMedia. 2 12 2005. OurMedia. 12 May 2006 <http://www.ourmedia.org/node/111478>.
Perhaps everyone else gets it, but I’m confused. What reward is there for the user who created the (very impressive) ad?
This concept is new to me, so I feel as if I’ve walked into a room where a conversation is already in progress, and I apologise for asking the participants to backtrack so that I can be brought up to speed.
Not at all, Karynr. I think it’s a conversation that has just begun and is looking for traction. I think, in the case of the Sony commercial, it was a contest. For the Move-on commercials, it was also contest, but most of the people who participated, genuinly believed in the product, defeating George Bush.
I think there are two converencees going on. One is that people, like you an me, now have access to the technology to produce near professional quality communications. Second, with that capability, we may want to construct communicates for (or against) issues and products that we care about. As a consumer, am I going to trust a commercial that was produced by a customer, or one that was produced by a professional ad agency.
It may simply be people looking for another disruptive behavior in the technology. We’ll see.