This piece of CGM2 (consumer-generated multi-media) to well worth a peek, but not for the obvious reasons. Frankly, I'm just not persuaded or convinced the complaint itself warrants a such a high production effort, and maybe that's in part because I just can't identify with the painpoint in the same way that thousands of consumers identified with the pre-YouTube Niestat brother's IPodsDirtySecret, which parodied the early iPod's painfully frustrating battery problem. Nor can others, it seems, given the dearth of YouTube views and comments on the Cingular spot (relative to other service-gone-bad viral blockbusters.)
What impressed me most was the degree to which the creator, Justin Calloway (I know his name because he reached out to me, and probably other bloggers as well), took the creative process to an entirely new level. The video looks like a resume supplement to a job application for Disney Animation studios; he's quite good, and his work reflects the degree to which the line between professional ad man and amateur satirist is being blurred by "better, faster, cheaper" tools. Calloway clearly has a bone to pick with Cingular, but the far bigger point to emphasize is that the site he created to exercise his feedback moment is better looking -- and dare I say, easier to use -- than most corporate websites.
Consumers have certainly come a very long way since the days of clunky product enthusiast sites like my own HybridBuzz.com, which chronicled my up-down-up experience with a hybrid car. Indeed, since the time I founded PlanetFeedback.com, an early CGM "informediary" (that was the term du jour back then) that helps consumers send letters thousands of companies and brands including wireless companies like Cingular, I've witnessed an almost mind-boggling shift in how consumers get their point across. Not every complaint leaving a digital trail across the web is credible, but there's no question the content creators are starting to perfect the same art of persuasion, emotional bonding, and creative imagery my father (an ad man from what me might call "Golden Era" of TV advertising) perfected during his career. Video in particular notches up the net impact of what we might dub "Complaint Letter 2.0" for the same reason TV has worked so well over the year: reason-to-believe & benefit visualization (remember the Bounty paper towels side-by-side), dramatic effect, and emotional bonding.
Which leads me back to Justin's video. I actually think Justin would have scored more views (he's got about 3000 so far) on YouTube if his video better internalized these core building blocks of the 30-second commercial. Frankly, it's hard to relate to his frustration (e.g. -- burning out speakers with a mobile phone), and four minutes -- eight times the length of a TV commercial -- feels like an eternity to absorb his message and pain. Indeed, the rules of attention and engagement apply as much to consumers as they apply to advertisers.
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