With more and more companies and brands getting involved in the social media space these days, marketers are trying hard to come up with new ways to engage the audience. Whether it's viral videos on YouTube, internet celebrity endorsements, or popular blogger outreach, brands have blurred the lines between company controlled messages and user-generated content.
Here's the latest video to makes its rounds on the web:
The Numa Numa guy has done stuff like this before (Pork and Beans with Weezer) and I believe that we will continue to see big companies working hard to tap into the social web for ways to get their brand in front of people.
Here's the question - Do company marketing and user-generated content really mix well? I can think of three camps of thought:
1. These videos are just plain fun and require no deep thought aside from their pure entertainment value. Numa Numa guy is funny and we love the dancing Gecko - bring on more of it.
2. These kinds of videos just feel like an awkward attempt to mix corporate advertising with viral user-generated content. They try too hard to be clever and don't really mix very well. Some in this group would even argue that this is the equivalent of selling out - these videos were never meant for this purpose. Think classic rock songs on car commercials.
3. Mixing corporate images with user-generated content does not get any real message across. Was 'Where the Hell is Matt?' successful? Extremely. Did it have anything to do with chewing gum? Nope. It's impossible to correlate the good feelings and fun these videos create with actual sales or growth, even if the video is extremely popular and company health and wealth improves in a year, therefore they are a waste of time, money, and effort for companies to make.
So where do you fall? Is there a category missing? Can corporate messages and marketing be mixed successfully with user-generated content?
