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dangers

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What are the dangers of Consumer Generated Marketing?

There's a difference between giving consumers ownership of a brand (which is why many companies are using CGM) and driving it into a ditch. Which is a very real possibility when you turn over control to the customer. At the end of the day, we may be left with stunts captured on video by consumers disguised as a contest. The danger of CGM lowering the advertising bar is discussed in a blog posting entitled consumer generated mediocrity.

Another danger of CGM is when you relinquish control of your advertising to consumers, you don't know what they'll say or do. When Chevrolet invited people to make their own spots for the Tahoe last year, anti-SUV versions quickly appeared on the Web site the company provided.

VW was gearing up in 2005 to follow through on their worldwide promise, sorry threat, to take legal action against the creators of this ad:

Comments (3)

The VW spot seems to me a case of brand hijack, but I personally think that VW makes a mistake.

There is a fine line between comedy parody and hijacking a brand. However, not all parody or negative CGM will ruin a brand. Look at all the parody on SNL? That kind of comedy actually gives more exposure to celebrities and brands......
I think the brands themselves and how they behave has more of an affect on how successful they are.

there is a school of thought which contends that there is no such thing as bad news. News or information is what it is. What journalists or PR folks, maybe even consumer work on is the context in which something like the VW add finds itself in. The trick is to take this context(social milieu) and the information(the ad) and make it evolve somehow into favorable consumer responsiveness through subsequent spots which 'rectify' the course of the company's core values.

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