Jane is expecting a baby, Adam is virtually speechless and BT are reveling in the success of their recent crowdsourcing / social media experiment.
In the past 5 years, BT’s interpretation of a modern family has appeared in over 35 ads and is one of the longest running plot-based ad campaigns to run on UK TV. Back in July, viewers were asked to vote for alternative endings to a dramatic new storyline by visiting a website – should there be a new addition to the BT family?
A Facebook page dedicated to the Adam and Jane saga encouraged fans to sign up to vote for their favourite ending and a chance to preview the ad before it was aired this week. The response was 72% in favour of the pregnancy with over 1.6 million people voting.
Fans were also encouraged to submit their own endings to BT’s scriptwriters – which apparently ranged from the couple having sextuplets through to aliens invading the family home.
The ad has had over 86,000 views (at time of writing) on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_tGduIg-S0&feature=channel but personally I prefer the outtakes..
Whilst Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, the agency behind the campaign, are no doubt cracking open some well deserved champagne, other brands are experimenting with user-generated ideas as a means of bypassing traditional ad agency fees. On Monday (23rd August), Unilever will air its first crowdsourced ad, featuring their animated Peperami character ‘Animal’.
After placing the brief online with crowdsourcing platform www.ideabounty.com, over 1200 entries were posted. The winners – Kevin Baldwin (advertising copywriter) and Rowland Davies (art director) were paid $10k for their idea. The ad was produced by London-based BPL Marketing.
You can sneak a preview of the ad at http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2010/aug/13/peperami-nibblers-ad
Unilever reckon the ad cost 60% less to make than if they had used a traditional advertising agency – but of course the writers had the advantage of working with an established brand and character that have been on our screens for quite some time.
However, the big debate raging around this campaign doesn’t concern the actual quality of the finished commercial – but rather whether or not this is a true example of crowdsourcing.
Both creators are professional freelance creatives – not members of the public, so it could be argued that this is simply ‘freelancing’ rather than crowdsourcing.
User generated content, better engagement and interaction with consumers through social media is all good stuff that needs to be embraced by design and advertising agencies. In fact, as the Peperami case proves, crowdsourcing does offer opportunities for smaller agencies and creatives to get their ideas in front of the big guys for a change. We can only hope that more brands are brave enough to experiment in this way and to take advantage of the engagement opportunities offered through crowdsourcing and social networks.
