Does the rise of social media signal the death of the professional creative?

I presume Simon is being deliberately provocative. UGC is rarely successful in creating buzz, fame or differentiation for a brand in a way that the client would want. For that you need smart, creative people, who, despite frequently being a monumental pain in the arse, deserve to be paid.

“An old friend of mine used to write a blog called Loser-Generated Content, which critiqued the phenomenon. At that time, most user-generated content was rubbish.

And it still is.”

‘And it still is’? No it’s not; it is consumer gold!

UGC has been the reason I no longer take adverts as gospel and it empowers me to buy the best products. Yes, there might be a few dud reviews, however they can be sniffed out to enable me to buy something of quality. (There are many ‘dud’ / misleading ad campaign let’s face it.

Crap products will still need to be marketed. Excellent ones might not, crowds will do the marketing for the manufacturers.

In short, the power of the people online are definitely a huge threat. I am not going to look at claims on a huge billboard ad; I will go online and listen to the chatter.

What you are missing Erm? is that people like me to have paid advertising to pay writers and reviewers. That’s what is missing at the moment, and as a consequence rates have got lower and lower and lower. The MEAA “suggested” rate is laughable when some publications – major ones – are offering 10c a word.

An ad for a Beemer will rarely sell a Beemer, but a well thought out and honest review and test drive will. Same applies in my field or camcorders.

I was going to post some user generated shaking of heads, but then I remembered Simon’s new gig. 😉

I should ad the “trick” is convincing the vendor(s) of that so they understand it. I remember many years ago at Bathurst an oils vendor pulling his sponsorship and heard them tell the driver “the signwriting on the car sold no more oil than usual”.

Three guest posts from Simon in less than a month! Now there’s proof for engaging UGC… Creatives (which in this sphere includes editorial staff) not involved…

Alex? Comment from what you see?

What a load of absolute balls.

When you need to rebuild a damaged brand, roll out a creative concept across multiple markets or out-think a major opponent, you turn to those creatives.

When you want a handheld shot of an over-enthusiastic teenager slamming back some mountain dew on a skateboard, shoot seven crap scripts in a day or essentially try and copy Buzzfeed then, by all means, use some content.

It’s loud, silly, gets a few hits and sells sod all. But there’s tonnes of it out there so let’s do some more!

But when your brand takes a dive, go and talk to the professionals.

What a total load of bollocks!

I have personally seen this experiment utterly backfire on a brand….

“I’ve heard stories of creators making high-quality videos for brands in return for nothing more than some free product.”

Its like saying, hey I know a bit about being a sparky, let me do your electrics…sorry I seem to have burnt your house down. Its always about building relationships and as a creative constantly looking to improve. Its trial and error that teaches narrative and how to make great content and the most of what is out there is utter crap…especially made by the hobbyists…its great that their are more creatives getting into the game but it all starts with an idea and those ideas are neither easy to come by or always cheap to create…Brands want packages…not the one idea. If its a race to the bottom….see you down their Brand that didn’t give a crap!

Sorry Tom, your analogy is inaccurate. The brand isn’t looking for a sparky to do permanent wiring, they are looking for a stylist to bung a few decorative candles around to appeal to whoever pops in on that particular occassion. So it’s low cost and low risk, with the potential of high reward.
In an era where authenticity is so highly valued, what could be more authentic than getting real people to do your creative? As an art director, ‘faking’ authentic voices as a part of my client’s communication is a pretty common request these days, and I definitely see this shift happening. How far it goes will be different for each brand, depending on how comfortable they are trading off their perceived control against the possible results. There’s more space for this with the mega-brands I think, who have already established their DNA – to go back to Tom’s analogy, their wiring is already done.

This is all so short term. Yes some dude on a skateboard drinking Mountain Dew or Coke may answer an immediate need. But where is the strategy, long term creative thinking? Social Media is just one part of the marketing mix. If you really want to talk to your Mountain Dew guzzling Skateboarder, you’re going to have to attract his attention and his peers, to create a brand culture that really cuts through and for that you need a creative strategist that knows what he’s talking about and can come up with an idea that is out of the box. You get what you pay for.

So if brands are trawling the internet for free content who needs a Planner?

Stuart, you need not worry. The Planner is needed because the brand needs a strategy to determine what type of content they should be gathering.

Would love mumbrella to do an article on a day in the life of a content “copywriter.” There’s loads of these jobs advertisied. What do they actually do and under what sort of pressure. It’s odd we never hear a peep from any of them.

Theory is great until put into practice.

Speaking of which, what practical arguments do you have to back your theory that ‘creatives are dead’ – sorry, that ‘clients should work with you instead of the traditional agency you just left?’

Woah, you are most unkind. I wasn’t being self-serving at all. If my theory is correct, then I am just as dead as all the other creatives. It is the likes of Stackla that stand to benefit from ugc, not Hungry Beast.