The On-Demand Brand: 10 Rules for Digital Marketing Success in an Anytime, Everywhere World

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HEINZ KETCHUP

never saw Chris Larrigan coming.

Caught in the hype around “user-generated video” and

“consumer-created” TV commercials, Heinz decided it was

high time it launched its own user-generated content contest.

And so the “Top This” TV challenge was born, as a promotion

that invited any American with a trusty Handicam and

Hollywood dreams to create their own thirty-second commer-

cial for Heinz 57.

At stake: up to $57,000 in cash and prizes.

Larrigan and his friends took the brand up on the chal-

lenge—to breathtaking effect.

At the time a fifteen-year-old high school student in

Baltimore, Larrigan (not his real name) had long had an inter-

est in filmmaking. He and his friends had even founded a com-

edy troupe that shot a number of videos ranging from a spoof

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of a Mont Blanc pen commercial, to rap songs about bacteria, to a

comedy about evolution for science class.

For the Heinz contest, the troupe once again found inspiration in

urban beats—crafting a rap music video that has the virtue of defying

description.

Yes, there’s the incessant beat. The head bobbing and the unnerv-

ing sight of white, upper middle class teens aping gangland hand sig-

nals. And inexplicable lyrics like “Yo Heinz is the ketchup with all

unique flavors. . . . It’s a sauce that repels alien invaders.”

But steeped in elaborate green screen backdrops and produced with

thousands of dollars’ worth of hi-def equipment and software, it’s a

relatively well-produced affair, one that can only have polished the

troupe’s schoolyard cred—while simultaneously grating the already

frayed nerves of the Heinz marketing executives charged with review-

ing thousands of contest entries.

“What makes it funny is the fact that we’re not very good at rap-

ping,” Larrigan deadpanned at the time. “So we decided a rap video,

and doing it in the dumbest way possible, would be attractive in its

own ‘off’ way.”

That’s certainly one way to put it. Years from now, when Larrigan’s

a famous auteur, he’ll no doubt look back at the episode and laugh. He

may even recognize the fact that he was caught up in marketing’s first

intrepid steps toward truly democratizing digital media. At least, that

was the idea.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, nearly

10 percent of online Americans have uploaded video to the Net, via

YouTube or other video sharing sites. Over 15 percent of those

between eighteen and twenty-nine have done so, and the younger you

skew, the more likely the participation in user-generated content.

Already, over 20 percent of online teenage boys have uploaded videos

of their own creation.

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Over time, marketers began to realize online video was popular,

and that consumer-created content either tended toward “Leave

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THE ON-DEMAND BRAND

Britney Alone”–style rants from celebrities’ fans, “Don’t Tase Me,

Bro”–level shenanigans of people in ridiculous situations, or scathing

spoofs of popular television commercials and brands.

It wasn’t long before marketers decided that if you can’t stop them,

embrace them—by providing consumers with the tools to craft com-

mercials for the chance to win prizes.

The idea: Entice hip young consumers to create their own videos

with the hope that the made-by-a-regular-Joe dynamic will build

interest outside the usual thirty-second spot, and that consumers will

email the homemade ads to their friends and build big-time buzz for

the brand. And today’s consumers seem more than happy to oblige.

“It’s a generational thing,” says Steven Amato, cofounder of Los

Angeles–based advertising-and-content studio Omelet. “It’s powerful

for brands, because it’s powerful for consumers. Consumers of today

don’t want to be advertised to—so much so that they would rather

make the ads themselves than sit back and have a passive experience

with the brand.”

The digerati like to call this kind of user-generated content (UGC)

the cutting edge, but it’s actually far from it.

“This label, ‘user-generated content,’ is new, but the concept dates

back to the origins of advertising in general, it’s as old as advertising

itself,” Norman Hayshar of Young & Rubicam recently told NPR,

adding that testimonials and jingle contests date back to the 1940s.

Indeed, for all the hype, user-generated content has been featured

on TV for nearly twenty years—in the form of ABC-TV’s America’s

Funniest Home Videos.

In Hayshar’s view, this new wave in UGC is being driven by two

forces: the popularity of YouTube, and the TV show American Idol.

“Mix these things together, and what you’ve really got is a creative

power-to-the-people movement that is reflected, as it always is, in the

culture in advertising.”

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But it hasn’t been without its share of pitfalls.

Just ask Chevrolet.

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