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Controlling Consumer Control Goes Out of Control

Jackie Huba’s Church of the customer blog has hosted a lively debate whether the Chevy Tahoe Apprentice campaign – in which consumers select from Chevy-provided video clips to create their own commercial --  is consumer-generated media or not. Consumers have settled it once and for all: technology trumps the corporate powers who would guide, constrain, and compel the “wisdom of the crowd” to do their bidding. But maybe Chevy should consider these ads as a new kind of ad testing mechanism for the images they associate with their vehicles.

Chevrolet thought they had a way to harness the power of consumer-generated media to further the Tahoe’s marketing goals: give consumers a carefully selected inventory of video and audio clips that they can assemble into their own commercials, cherry-pick the ones that best fit Tahoe’s strategy, and voila, consumer-generated commercials. If a consumer created something the brand didn’t like, no problem, it would simply be suppressed.

Problem is, the consumers haven’t followed by the script. They have come to create commercials, but many of them depict the Tahoe as a gas-guzzling, global-warming-gas-belching, earth-destroying behemoth. These ads are now cropping up on sites such as TotalTactics, Heavy on the Chevy, and You Tube. The story has even made the New York Times advertising column.

As a professional marketer I think there is more to learn than just that technology has made consumer control absolute. These commercials are a virtual Rohrschach test – or maybe a Zaltman brand co-creation collage -- of how the typical images used in SUV commercials strike consumers. Instead of communicating freedom to explore the wilderness, they communicate the power to trample it. Instead of confidence, arrogance. Instead of protection, destruction.

Being a Prius-driving, save-the-planet kind of guy, I love this, and perhaps this may turn the tide on the popularity of SUVs (my favorite ad is “What Will You Tell Your Kids You Drove?). People buy cars to project an image about themselves to friends, neighbors, colleagues. So far, the car companies have been able to wrap their vehicles with the image of their choice; now the friends, neighbors and colleagues are setting the agenda for the associations that will attach to SUV drivers. This kind of peer pressure may accomplish what nothing short of a $1-a-gallon-gas-tax could do: destroy the market for SUVs.

If you think I am over the top, check out the commercials on YouTube – then go back to Jackie Huba’s blog and read her analysis of the growth of this site. Watch a few of the consumer-created Tahoe commercials and see if you will ever look at an SUV the same way again.

Posted by Jim Nail on April 5, 2006 at 09:19 AM | Email this post Permalink

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A new site has cropped up that addresses the concerns for safe CGM. It's called SpotPitch.com and it provides technology and a methodology that protects brands while providing controlled CGM for clients. It's a portal, blog, production company, advertising and marketing firm and talent agency all in one place.

Posted by: Billy Carmen | Aug 9, 2006 12:47:08 AM

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