Heinz Make your own

More from Rebecca, who points me in the direction of another entry in the seemingly never ending stream of user generated advertisement promotions, this one from Heinz ketchup (US only), at the Top This TV challenge. There’s nothing too new here; it’s in conjunction with YouTube, it needs to be 30 seconds, you have to make it all yourself. At least in this one you win a cash prize of, what else, $57,000. IP rights are the same as most of these comps, once you reach semi-finalist stage, you assign all rights to Heinz. The top 15 videos, based on the judges choice, will be semi-finalists; these are then voted on and the top 5 win cash and are shown on TV.

The driver behind these competitions are to get the customers involved, let them make some marketing for a product they love. Unfortunately I’ve often seen that the winners are in the ad business anyway (or want to be). But I think they do little at the moment to change the culture, they are marketing in themselves, not the company looking for new ways to market their products from the consumers. The paradigm shift, the opening of the creative message and brand building will not come from this direction, because the brand is still in control. The next interesting thing will be when a big company opens up a wider part of a campaign (instead of a one-off ad, shown once) to the community. By this, I don’t mean handing over the creative process for nbrand ideas lock, stock and barrel, but using the passion of the community to market and spread the word, with ideas and tactics from the community.