A very interesting concept that is growing nowadays is how companies let consumers design ads for their products. Basically they leverage the internet to create hundreds of viral videos (created by anyone and everyone) and then let the ecosystem take care of the rest through YouTube and others.
A classical case is the Chevy Tahoe ad back in 2006. GM created the checyapprentice.com and asked people to create ads for the Tahoe and let them post these ads freely and point to them everywhere in the web. It was structured as a contest to create ads. The results were massive. The contest drew more than 30,000 entries in less than four weeks.
In a few more weeks some of the funnier videos created were attracting hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. Not all of these were positive, actually many of them were quite sarcastic of the Tahoe (although the vast majority were pointing to its many advantages). The Chevy marketers however did not interfere or try to filter these out. They realized they were actually working to their benefit and creating awareness and a positive image of them being open to criticism.
This concept is completely changing not only how marketing material is distributed (from TV to YouTube) but also how the creative and the production are done. It is another signal at the power of the crowds.
P.S. The Tahoe racked up record sales after this campaign reaching 30% market share and reducing its time to sale from 4 months to 46 days. Also chevyapprentice.com -despite being a microsite- drove more traffic to chevy's website than google and yahoo.
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