Crash and burn.

In an October 26th, 2009 post titled, "Advertising's Public Option" I said, "So no more sneering from me. I say let the consumer have their fun and flex their creative muscles."

The comment was in defense of consumer crowd-sourcing and related specifically to Doritos's 2009 "Crash the Superbowl Party" promotion.

Well, the six finalists for this year's (2010) competition have been announced and having just suffered through their viewing, perhaps I spoke too soon. The work is shockingly bad. I mean CACA. If you like ingesting fresh road kill then by all means have a peek. But don't say I didn't warn you.

Maybe I should retract by saying, "Consumer - stand back from all writing materials. Keep the power button in the off position on your cameras, you've done enough damage thank you very much. Asshole!"

Well, not exactly. I still believe in the value of crowd-sourcing. People had their fun. Doritos probably got the necessary branding boost they wanted. The fact is that from a creative content point of view crowd-sourcing will work better in some cases more than in others.

Off course, another indirect even unintended value of crowd-sourcing is that it may just illustrate clearly how difficult it is to create smart/effective/entertaining/original/challenging/humorous advertising. The truth is that it can only really flourish in the hands of a few.