The price of converstion is worth it
The Times reports today that when Chevy opened up a site for people to remix Chevy Tahoe commercials, some folks used it as a chance to make snarky anti-SUV ads. Now you’d expect this story to end with Chevy’s ad agency backing up fast, killing the commercials, striking back at the unruly mob, and praying not to get fired. But no:
A spokeswoman for Chevrolet, Melisa Tezanos, said the company did not plan to shut down the anti-S.U.V. ads.“We anticipated that there would be critical submissions,” Ms. Tezanos said. “You do turn over your brand to the public, and we knew that we were going to get some bad with the good. But it’s part of playing in this space.”
Well, bravo. That’s not only right, it’s smart. It’s the realization that the public owns the trust put in brands and you can’t try to get into the conversation and then shut half of it off. Besides, it’s not as if any of these subversive spots are going to convince SUV drivers to reform their ways. You can bet that SUV fans will enjoy defending their vehicles of choice. It’s like the Republicans hoping that the Democrats really do try to censure Bush; it will only bring out more Republicans to the polls. I don’t care what you say, just spell the URL right.
: LATER DISCLOSURE: A few hours after posting this, I got notice from Federated Media of an ad buy from… GM Planworks. It’s a different campaign but in the interest of full disclosure, it’s the related to the same big company. I also know people at GM Planworks at introduced them to About.com, where I consult, for a pitch.
Tags: Ad, interactivity
April 4th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Now thats the spirit of free speech. kudos
Its gradeschool psychology that compels us to answer even the silly insults that are flung at us.
April 4th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
There’s nothing ’silly’ or ‘insulting’ (can a car be insulted?) about using Chevy’s site to highlight GMs insistence on building and promoting an unsustainable and harmful product.
Kudos indeed for not pulling the plug. However, they still make a god awful product.
April 4th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
[...] Jeff Jarvis is never more on target about the internet than when he talks about “the conversation”. He has a great example of a corporate entity getting it right: Chevy allowing people to make ads for their products on their websites, and then not taking down negative ads that people post. [...]
April 5th, 2006 at 12:39 am
Um, the links I had bookmarked to the snarky ads don’t work any more.
Were they killed, or was it just a bandwidth crunch?
I’ll try again tomorrow, I’ve stared at a computer enough today.
April 5th, 2006 at 9:03 am
Somebody on my blog says that a lot of the anti-SUV Tahoe ads seem to have been plotted on DemocraticUnderground, and they’re angry that some of their ads were taken down; but that it turns out that some ads have been taken down not for being anti-SUV, but because the DemocraticUndergroundians couldn’t resist *swearing* in their ads.
April 5th, 2006 at 9:09 am
That’s a bulshit alert for Jeff, btw. This is a clear case of Chevy suppressing political bullshit! Er, I mean, suppressing Democrat’s bullshit politics. No, that is, bullshit as politics when used by… oh, never mind.
February 17th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
[...] Picked this story up from Buzz Machine. Chevy is the latest of the big corporations trying to get a piece of the Live Web (more affectionately known to the technorati as Web 2.0) The New York Times reports that Chevy has launched a site that allows web users to make their own ads. Splendid. User participation. Excellent. Of course, when you do that sort of thing people are always apt to use the opportunity to criticize. Strangely enough, despite the harsh words from some participants, Chevy’s media company is taking the whole thing in stride. “We anticipated that there would be critical submissions,†Ms. Tezanos said. “You do turn over your brand to the public, and we knew that we were going to get some bad with the good. But it’s part of playing in this space.â€I second Buzz Machine in saying I’m impressed that they get it. Nice to see that the big guys do occasionally play nice.Welcome to the social ;)These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
February 17th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
[...] This is an update a post I wrote last year called “Corporate Media Gets the Game.” Long story short, Chevy embraced Web 2.0 and came out with a web site that allowed everyday folks to create their own Chevy ads. Of course, some people used that as an opportunity to criticize the company. And while many expected Chevy to realize its mistake and take the whole thing down, but they didn’t. Instead they realized that in new media, the conversation goes both ways. The firm gets to advertise to your consumers, and your consumers get to advertise about the firm. But then I did a Marshall McLuhan take on the whole thing, especially the criticism, and I realized, even though the critical ads are trying to take Chevy down, their trucks are still impossibly driving to the tops of mountains, aren’t they?–proving once again, to the critics chagrin, I’m sure, that the medium is the message.Welcome to the social ;)These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]