Yesterday I read an interesting article that caught my attention in the Contra Costa Times that PromoXtra passed on in their daily online promotional newsletter. The article is called "Heinz finds ad Contest has a messy downside" which is about a current promotional contest, Top This TV Challenge from Heinz. The website is done quite well and has a streaming video ad that you can view below that asks "Are You Hungry for Fame?...All you need is a camcorder and a great idea for a Heinz ketchup commercial."
We in the promotional marketing industry have been following this trend of consumer-generated content and the article brings their California readers up to date by saying "Consumer brand companies
have been busy introducing campaigns like Heinz's that rely on
user-generated content, an approach that combines the populist appeal
of reality television with the old-fashioned gimmick of a sweepstakes
to select a new advertising jingle. Pepsi, Jeep, Dove and Sprint have
all staged promotions of this sort, as has Doritos, which proudly
publicized in February that the consumers who made one of its Super
Bowl ad did so on a $12 budget."
So, what's different about the Heinz promotional contest? Well it appears that they have received quite a lot of submissions haven't been what Heinz would want to associate with their brand. Heinz has hired an outside
promotions firm to view all the videos and so far according to the article they
have rejected more than 370 submissions. Many of these didn't fit the judging criteria that's spelled out in the contest rules, but unfortunately have made their way on to YouTube anyhow.
As of this morning there are a total of 386 videos posted on the official Heinz YouTube Site. I took a look at some and found a few that were a bit entertaining, but many that were just plain bad. So I did a search on YouTube for Heinz and found some of the others that were disqualified (or banned as they say). Most of these involve smearing ketchup all over your body, one from a Dutch person mocking Heinz for making the contest only eligible for U.S. citizens and another from Sweden that I had to first consent that I'm an adult in order to watch. You can probably figure that one out. As David Ciesinski, vice president for Heinz Ketchup said "they wouldn't be appropriate to show mom".
So did Dorito's, Dove and the NFL also have this problem with their promotional contests that ask for consumer generated media? They probably had some of it, but I asked myself what's different about Heinz and I posted a comment to the article in the Contra Costa Times and I thought I'd repeat it here for my readers which says:
So if brands want to go in this direction they need to first consider whether or not their product (or service) is the right fit to open up to the collective "you" (referring back to the NY Times 2006 Person of the Year). I'm sorry, but ketchup does look a lot like blood and personally I think it's not very appealing to look at, wasn't even in the famous "Anticipation" ad. I don't think mustard is very appealing either. But yes, we do eat many hamburgers and hot dogs in this country that incude both of these condiments. I'm sure the people at Heinz and their ad agencies have struggled in the past to generate good looking ketchup ads, and used professional food stylists to do it.
As I've noted in my post on Contests they generally are used to help reinforce the brand or the product/service attributes and its positioning in the marketplace. So, if you can think of any negative attributes that your brand may have, believe me the consumer will also.
My company, DDC Marketing Group, is assisting with administering a consumer-generated promotion for
Purina's Cute Cat Video Contest. I'll have to let you know how this turns out. However, if you think back and ask if the brand and/or product in the content is right for this you have to admit, cats are much cuter than ketchup. I wouldn't advise Reddi-Whip to do a consumer-generated contest promotion either. However I was surprised to see a "Reddi-Whip Moments" section on their website but it's text only, no photos.
The Heinz Top This TV Challenge Contests runs until August 6th, so we'll have to come back and see what they end up with. I'm sure they'll have a great winner in the long run. So if you're thinking of jumping on the bandwagon with your brand, you should learn from those that already have.
Something like this, perhaps?
Posted by: Hardy Boy | June 05, 2007 at 05:41 PM