Amateur ads given impetus by Superbowl

At least one motor manufacturer ran a campaign here locally last year, based on amateur footage.

At Sunday’s Superbowl it was Chevrolet, along with Alka-Seltzer and Doritos chips, leading the way with amateur footage replacing their usual sponsor’s message on TV.

R30 million a minute

And even though Superbowl night has become a traditional break from convention with most big brands opting for whacky off-the-wall offerings, it nonetheless takes quite a lot of courage to try something new, given that the average 30 second spot during the game costs advertisers a whopping R15 million.

Just to put that in perspective, those ad rates would chew up the total annual advertising budget of South Africa’s biggest advertiser in around about 15 minutes.

But, using consumer generated content or rather, run-of-the-mill home video footage, does make an enormous amount of sense. After all, media consumers do have a history of relating to their peers rather than the professionals producing content.

Preference for peers

Take newspapers, for example. It’s common knowledge that in most mainstream newspapers the letters to the editor page is one of the most read sections. And even in the broadcast world talk radio has grown like Topsy, with listeners clearly very interested in what their fellow consumers have to say about things.

All this taken into account, and particularly given the fact that when one compares the sort of ads that win awards judged by advertising people and those judged by consumers, they are nine times out of 10 completely different. Which suggests that the average TV viewer has a completely different idea to a lot of advertising creatives as to what amounts to appealing advertising.

This is not to suggest for a minute that all advertising people don’t have a clue how to communicate with the consumer, because like the fashion and motor industries to give just two of many examples, consumers don’t create trends, they need to be led.

Makes sense

But, in a lot of cases it makes sense to have amateur footage in TV commercials particularly. Especially given worldwide trends of fewer and fewer viewers actually watching commercial breaks. A phenomenon that is giving huge impetus to branded programme content and product placement.

But, there have to be some fairly strict ground rules. One cannot just ask consumers to produce an ad. There has to be a certain amount of guidance and a lot of incentive to get consumers to actually take things seriously and put a bit of effort into things.

For the Superbowl, Doritos, for example, offered almost R100 000 as a cash prize. The winning ad showed a young bloke eating Doritos in the traffic and spotting a girl in a car alongside also eating the chips. He gets mesmerised and crashes into the car in front of him. A simple scenario but very funny indeed in spite of being shot as a home movie.

Chevrolet held a competition among university students.

Production costs don’t change

Unfortunately, this doesn’t necessarily mean lower production costs. While it might cost the amateur creative less that R100 to produce his or her ad, it probably doesn’t mean that the client gets away with a pitifully small production bill. Organising competitions and marshalling consumers to get interested costs a lot of money in terms of time, effort.

Of course the danger in marketing terms is that if too many brands start getting in on this amateur act, it will become overdone and the viewer will quickly get tired of having to watch shaky home video footage during every second commercial break.

It’s a great idea every now and then, especially when it is appropriate and relevant to both product and message. What will screw it up as always, will be when it is contrived.