The Volkswagon Effect
By Vincent Heeringa,
Now that we’ve given a name to it, I’m starting to see Gen C everywhere – a bit like the way you see VWs on every corner when you own one. Converse have been running ads made by their customers by creating a film competition that people around the world enter. Check it out. It’s really, really good. So has Sony (see this amazing ad made by an 18 year old volunteer). So has L’Oreal.
The examples are included in a terrific piece on the IT web site ZDNet which speculates on the demise of advertising agencies if this trend continues. “Can we produce work like that? I don't know. But I'm counting on the kid in his bedroom who has a really funny idea.” says one guy from McCann Ericsson. I guess the future belongs to the agencies that nurture rather than resist the trend toward user generated content.
On the local front, Sorted, the site for the Retirement Commission has been running a reasonably effective campaign using fictitious characters in real retirement quandaries. What’s more interesting is that the campaign has caused quite a stir on the TradeMe community forum.
Sorted posed a character called Steph on the TradeMe community site as if she was a real person, asking for advice about budgeting. Initially the community flamed her and the Commission for imposing a fictitious character on them all (they are a sad bunch, really) but now she’s been adopted as one of their own and her case has become a source of genuine debate about retirement and budgeting. Some of the comments are hilarious. They advise stripping, prostitution, divorce, suicide. Steph has started a life of her own. Or at least that how it feels. Nice one, Sorted.
Comments
Troy McClure
I saw you on the telly this morning and nearly choked on my toast. Gen C. What a have. Why does every damn change in the way people do stuff have have a catchy handle? Whatever happened to Gen Z? Did you run out of the alphabet? People have been making home made movies for decades. Ordinary folk have been publihsing their tracts for centuries. It's called opinions and, hello, people have had them for millennium without it needing a marketing term for it. This is not useful journalism - just jingoism.
Vincent
Troy McClure, don't I remember you from that show "I was professional cynic - but then I quit in disgust"? I completely, utterly , thoroughly disagree with you. When a phenomenon occurs, a name gives it meaning, life, intelligence. I'm sorry I didn't think of Gen C because it's a superb term to cover a variety of changes, from technological to social. As for useful journalism - I'm not sure what counts for you unless you think the Herald has been doing any lately. I haven't noiticed. Thanks for watching me on telly though. Did you like my hair?
David
First up - debate is good.
Secondly, isn't it great you can express your opinion in real time, with no intermediation or editing?
You are part of Generation C.
Home movies have been made for as long as there has been affordable technology - but, until now, there has been no unfettered access to an audience. I think you have missed that point.
Let me tell you one of my own experiences. In 1999 I launched a hobby web site called eMale.co.nz, a men's interest mag intended to promote a health message (sugar coated with cars and big boys toys etc). I wrote, designed and published the thing online. It had 400 pages of content. By the time I pulled the plug in 2002 to focus on my day job as Creative Director at Lion Nathan's eMarketing business I had a world wide audience of 30,000 unique users.
It was a buzz to have direct contact with so many people and to have the tools to do it entirely alone. That, for me, was proto GenC.
The trick is to harness the capacity of digital tools, the Internet and markets where traditional media outlets and brands have lost their traditional hegemony. Now boundless ideas have no barriers. How can you commercially exploit the opportunity? GenC is not simply a social or demographic trend - and not simply a cute handle.
David MacGregor
Idealog Creative Director
Troy McClure
I don't see how anything fundamental has changed - not enough for you to claim there's some kind of revolution happening. You guys are hype merchants. I admire your chutzpah but face it, there was nothing new in the New Economy and there's nothing revolutionary or Renaissance in Creative Economy. Eeeerg! I just used one of your terms. It the economy stupid - not new not creative, not nothing. Just the economy.
Vincent
I remember having arguments like this with the Big Roge back in the heady days of the New Economy (I'm sorry, I do believe there is one). I wonder if, as with Roger, we are arguing over semantics - revolution or evolution, there is a change happening: connectivity, creativity, community and channels to market are changing the way we do business. How else do you explain $700m spent on TradeMe? Or $US580 million on MySpace? These are the network effects that Negroponte and others predicted would happen. You may not like it, Troy, but you're soaking in it my friend.
barnaclebarnes
Troy is right…Gen-C is the wrong word for it. We have and always will create. My nana takes photos with a film camera at a family wedding, The kids put on puppet shows for their parents, etc. What has changed is that we can now Publish this to a wider audience thanks to the cheap tools, lower skill levels required and the internet. The other dfference is that the new generation may also feel more comfortable publishing to a wider audience as well.
BTW: I was trying to find some comment on this mornings event in Auckland but I guess Idealog doesn\'t practice what it preaches, no blog entry, no comment. Nada, nothing.
Vincent
Yes, we were offline yesterday (thank you telstra) but Barnacle is right to point this out. I have just posted after this morning\'s event and will do more. Consider myself chastised!
Juha
Can I be a pendant and point out that it's "Volkswagen" and not "Volkswagon"? I can? Thanks!
:P
Matt Cooney
Your pendantry is welcome anytime, Juha.
Anonymous comments on this post are disabled. Please sign up to post a new comment.