Advertising's Public Option.

On this day eight years ago I watched a focus group of 18-34 year old young men rip apart my advertising concepts for Norelco. It still haunts me to this day. As I munched furiously on M&M's, I felt a sudden rush of revulsion when one of the young men actually had the temerity to come up with his own idea. "Why doesn't Norelco just pay them to create their advertising", I sneered loudly to which my advertising cabal chuckled madly. No one is chuckling any more.

Welcome to the age of consumer crowd-sourcing aka consumer generated advertising. Or Hoi Polloi Inc, as I affectionately call it. Hundreds of years ago, the crowd was toppling monarchs. Twenty years ago the crowd was breaking down the walls of totalitarian regimes. Today, they're writing ads. Isn't progress a beautiful thing.

Okay I admit it, I'm still rather skeptical, but no longer contemptuous. You see, I totally get the rational. The game today is "two way consumer engagement". Thanks to technology and new media applications like social networking, consumers not only interact with brands but can now directly engage with them like never before blah blah blah.

Doritos's "Crash the Superbowl Party" promotion is a stand-out example. Doritos gives consumers the chance to create their own superbowl ad. Joe Public meet Joe Pytka. Last year's winning work wasn't bad and to be fair the production values were generally high even if the budgets weren't. As someone who has produced a fair amount of "spec" lately, I'm a big believer in low budget productions. They can help concentrate an idea. And low budget means NO CELEBRITIES!!

Now none of the work had a wow idea. And most of it would certainly have been killed in the first round of a creative review at a decent advertising agency, but that's actually not the point. For Doritos it was a major success. Lots of engagement.

Consumer crowd-sourcing is about quantity, not quality. The brand isn't expecting the public to come up with better ideas than their agencies. And in truth consumer generated advertising probably never will, no matter what Bob Garfield says. All they care about is that the participation be massive. No doubt, this year's contest will be huge.

So no more sneering from me. I say let the consumer have their fun and flex their creative muscles. And let's find new ways for them to engage with their favorite brands. Here's a thought. How about Doritos create a "Crash the Boardroom" promotion where consumers are given chance to replace the Chief Marketing Director. Now there's brand engagement for you.