{"id":118,"date":"2006-04-06T04:29:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-06T11:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulgillin.com\/2006\/04\/user-generated-ads-can-backfire.html"},"modified":"2006-04-06T04:29:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-06T11:29:00","slug":"user-generated-ads-can-backfire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/user-generated-ads-can-backfire\/","title":{"rendered":"User-generated ads can backfire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>InformationWeek&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.informationweek.com\/blog\/main\/archives\/2006\/04\/truckin_and_pot.html\">Johanna Ambrosio<\/a> writes about a new GM campaign for the Chevy Tahoe that invites website visitors to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chevyapprentice.com\/\">create their own commercials<\/a> and enter a contest. The social networking experiment has had mixed results.<\/p>\n<p>To date, 20,000 ads have been created with about 20% of them negative, a GM spokeswoman says. GM says it&#8217;s leaving the ads slamming the SUV on the site along with the positive ones. It&#8217;ll be interesting to which ones get mailed around the &#8216;net. My guess is that a lot more than 20% of the e-mailed ads will be parodies than love letters.<\/p>\n<p>Give GM credit for being willing to take  its lumps on this idea.  Marketers had to know that they  were taking a gamble when they put a massive SUV out for a social marketing experiment just as gas was being forecast to hit $3\/gallon this summer.  It was the proverbial waving of the red flag in front of the bull. And some SUV critics are taking the bait. Check out <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chevyapprentice.com\/view.php?country=us&amp;uniqueid=ed9acefc-1185-1029-98eb-0013724ff5a7\">this one<\/a>.  It&#8217;s funny, but probably not the kind of viral marketing GM wants.<\/p>\n<p>You gotta give a company credit for taking a risk, though. GM could hunker down and play defense but in its current situation, that&#8217;s not going to go very far. Good for GM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>InformationWeek&#8217;s Johanna Ambrosio writes about a new GM campaign for the Chevy Tahoe that invites website visitors to create their own commercials and enter a contest. The social networking experiment has had mixed results. To date, 20,000 ads have been &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/user-generated-ads-can-backfire\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pTy95-1U","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}