Sean McDonald
Does social media make us act on our best behavior? It depends somewhat with your personal outlook of human behavior. Is the natural, human tendency to act good or bad? I try to think the best of people, that humans want to treat other kindly, but sometimes we need some oversight.
Since almost everyone (ages 12+) has a camera phone and desire to share what ever they see, feel, hear, taste, and smell; we could be forcefully reminding each other to be honest, social media is acting as oversight or audit of our behaviors, even in advertising.
I took this picture in New York City (downtown area). It caught my eye, they did not say “we are the lowest priced”, but inserted “probably”. Not too clever, but it got me thinking. How will advertising messages, especially product claims change from agency creations to user generated?
Yes, there have been different ads with user generated content (Frito Lay Super Bowl TV Ad). But are we ready and poised to start aggregating the input from thousands (or millions) of customers for a particular product, and get collective voice into ads? Not today, but one day the creative could come from the social collective and generate a more honest, field tested message.
