Ever since Blendtec launched the ‘Will it blend?’ videos on an unsuspecting public in 2007 there has been a trend for professional and user-generated content which demonstrates the toughness of a product. Here is one from power tool manufacturer Craftsman in the US as seen on Creativity Online.
You can also see some quality skateboard testing over at Flexdex, which has encouraged people to go out and test their own boards by driving cars over them – see below
Seeding the idea to test products with professional content can then lead product fans to do similar videos in homage to their favourite products. As the guy in the Jeep say to his buddy Trom – ‘yeah man, we’ve got video of that’. Advertisers can get a little wary of this kind of viral content production – after all what would happen if someone tried to blend a Craftsman drill in a Blendtec blender while riding a Flexdex skateboard? Mayhem – that’s what and frankly that is a video which many fans of the genre would like to see but I doubt that the CMO of a large corporation would be thankful for.
Once video is online then people can play with it, copy it, mash it up with various other influences and generally go crazy. They don’t have to respect brand guidelines or rules from Ofcom or the FTC but if there are fans that truly believe in what the brand produces then they should be encouraged rather than limited. Engaging with them carries a greater potential than limiting them and if the occasional bad egg gets out then a quick mail to YouTube or other video sites should soon get them taken down.
I’m a big fan of tearing down some of the walls, let the creative masses get their hands on your content and see what they come up with. Judging by the number of crowsourcing headlines that have been getting attention recently – it seems that quite a few advertisers are starting to agree.
