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When marketers dive into the wild world of user generated content, there are definite “rules of engagement” that must be considered. After all, as we learned with Consumer Controlled Conversations (trend #7 from our 10 Trends for 2010), consumers don’t need your brand’s help to express themselves online. In the case of video, you should be asking yourself: why would a consumer post their video with us as opposed to sharing it with the world on Youtube?
There are a number of answers to this question. (In fact, we’ve got more than we can fit into this post – contact us for more on the subject.) However, the most common answer is good ol’ fashioned cash. Yes, of course you can get people to participate if you offer the winner an enormous cash prize, but many brands simply don’t have that kind of money to blow. More importantly, many consumers don’t have the time or the interest to create a whole video for every campaign under the sun.
And that’s why we love the One Frame of Fame idea from the Dutch electronica group C-Mon & Kypski. To promote their latest single, the band members made a basic video where they danced in front of the camera, and broke this video into individual frames. Fans who visited the One Frame of Fame site were encouraged to submit a photo mimicking the pose in a given frame, which would then be inserted into the video, with new submissions added in every hour. As you can see in the above clip, the end result was quite lively.
Pretty fun idea, right? It’s also a simple idea, brilliantly activated. (Although the technology behind it was anything but simple – go behind the scenes for more info). For the fans, this arrangement didn’t require them to create an entire video. Instead, the submission took only a few moments, and was something anyone with a webcam could produce. For the band, there was no need to blow a bunch of dough on prizes, since the video effectively traded in the currency of user generated content: a moment of glorious attention! The final product was not only fun, but also drove home the message of collaboration amongst a community of fans (one might say it’s a special treat for this Micro Community – trend #4).
For brands struggling to integrate user generated content without a Doritos-style budget, efforts like this provide a compelling template. The best bets for stretching your budget are simplifying the submission process and rewarding fans with attention, an especially fun end-product, or something that they can brag about to their friends (yes, even a single clip of a music video).
