Filed under: National Marketing & Advertising | Tags: I'm into Nuggets Ya'll, McDonald's Marketing, McDonald's Viral Video, McDonalds, McDonalds Commercial, UGC, User generated content
We all know about companies leveraging YouTube to get in front of their customers again. This couldn’t be more true with brands that are targeting youth. Marketers know that success has been made creating a genuine word-of-mouth dialogue about brands through user-generated content. Those who get it understand that it is a short-lived but powerful tool. Many will take a stab at it and fail miserably. Some will get lucky … like McDonald’s did this summer with these two tools. However, some people like this guy think “it’s the most annoying commercial ever” and insinuate that it isn’t “quality” content.
What this guy doesn’t understand is that this UGC spot wasn’t created for him. It was created for high school and college kids who eat fast food a hundred times a week. It was created to be entertaining. Now, McDonald’s is doing the smart thing by using it without altering it and running it on TV. I saw it this morning at about 6:30 at a time when students are sure to be getting ready for school. It’s not genius; it’s just smart.
I have three simple rules for UGC: 1. Make it entertaining for your target consumer. 2. Don’t overproduce it. 3. Post it to YouTube. It has well over 6 million videos to search from, close to 3 billion views, and rank third among youth when surveyed on their favorite websites. Don’t create your own webpage and ask people to upload videos or create profiles on it like Panasonic or Wal-Mart did. No one cares about your UGC/social networking site. They exist already. Teens are smarter than that and want you to market with them … not at them. What do you think?
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Of the three examples I pointed out, only the McDonald’s one is targeting kids. Many of the other commercials that use UGC content aren’t targeting kids at all. And just because it is UGC does not mean it’s good content. It’s still about the quality of the content and the message being delivered. Advertisers use the UGC phrase as an excuse many times and think just because UGC is the cool term these days that any content that is user generated must be good. If so, then why are no UGC sites making any money?
Comment by Dan Rayburn September 7, 2007 @ 6:08 pmAgreed. Not everyone should use UGC. Brands need to understand that it can backfire. The best UGC is unsolicited. Most brands can only dream of being so lucky.
Comment by J.J. Bugs September 7, 2007 @ 6:45 pm