This Guy's Ad to Sell His 1996 Suzuki Wins the Internet

... but what does it mean for Marketers when your customers are better at advertising than you are?

Several years ago, Warner Bros. was faced with a dilemma. Their new superhero movie - The Green Lantern, was slated to come out that summer, and they were still months away from launching the official movie trailer. In Hollywood, the precise timing of promotion for a movie launch is not only regulated to certain promotional windows, it is governed by industry dogma that prescribes a formula that's rarely deviated from.

And yet, there it was - a masterfully produced trailer for the upcoming film, collecting millions (yes millions) of views on YouTube. Nobody knew where it had come from, but the footage was all fake - cobbled together from clips of other superhero and space action films to make it appear to be a trailer for the film. The trailer had been produced by a fan. For Warner Bros. this raised all sorts of questions. Should they thank the maker of the film or complain to YouTube and have it taken down? What was their legal obligation considering the film made use of copyrighted clips? Would this boost or hurt the film once the official trailer was released?

Ultimately, the trailer stayed up - and put the official trailer to shame in terms of organic view counts. Did it help or hurt the film? It's impossible to tell - Green Lantern ranks on many lists of the "Top Flops" in Hollywood despite eeking out a 10% return when global ticket sales were tallied up. There is a strong argument that it was a bad idea to spend $200M on a superhero no one had ever heard of... but there is an equally strong argument that 7 million people who viewed the fake trailer might never have heard of it otherwise.

This past week, another fan-made trailer is gathering massive attention and millions of views. This time it's for... a 1996 Suzuki Vitara? Yes, a brilliantly produced video advertises Eugene Romanovsky's "deep sorrow for selling his little beast" and the video is pure gold. Take a look...

In this scenario, I'm sure there is a lot less hand-wringing going on at Suzuki than there was a Warner Bros. These 3 million views of a customer's love ballad to his 20-yr old car are the kind of thing you just can't buy. Hopefully they are brainstorming right now at Suzuki about how to engage with Eugene and thank him for his passionate endorsement.

All that being said, it does beg the question - in the absence of a Hollywood-quality filmmaker who willingly and passionately advertises for your brand, how should marketers be proactively engaging with users who create branded content?

First things first, brands need to come to terms with the idea that customers are actually better marketers than they are. AdWeek publicized a study from OfferPop (now Wyng) last year that was illuminating... 35% of businesses believe THEY are better at marketing their own brands than consumers are. Yet, 85% of consumers believe that content from other consumers is more influential over their purchase decisions. Adding to this stat is Mavrck which announced last year that user generated posts about brands on Facebook receive 7x more engagement than branded posts from the brands themselves, and Salesforce, which similarly claims that user generated content (UGC) achieve 50% higher engagement rates. Promoting brands may be our life's work, but our stories will always be less authentic than real customers'.

Now, once we've dusted off our bruised ego's, the next question is how do we take advantage of this new reality? Many brands have shown us what's possible - whether it's the world famous Old Spice campaign or Coca-Cola's "Share a Coke" efforts on Instagram. But is it realistic for regular, everyday brands to expect consumers to help market their products?

In fact, you may not even realize it, but there's a whole cottage industry of social tech companies trying to help brands capitalize on this trend... Companies like Chute, Stackla, Miappi, and Wyng all profess the ability to help brands source, procure, and publicize user generated content about their brands.

For many brands, this is a big leap, though. To go from the carefully curated campaigns designed in Madison Ave conference rooms to sourcing whatever customers have hashtagged on Instagram as advertising content. Perhaps the best first step is to start deliberately engaging your customers and simply asking for them to partner with you. 50% of consumers say they want direction when it comes to creating content about their favorite brands and yet only 16% of them claim to receive it. 

In my experience, if you identify the right customers, they will happily become advocates for a brand they love. The key is to make them part of the process. Bring them in, meet with them in person, explain what you're trying to do, and then launch the new campaign in partnership with your customers. It may sound antithesis to the old adage of customers thinking they want a faster horse, but it's not about inventing the next generation of transportation. It's about producing marketing and public relations campaigns that resonate and motivate our target audience. So why not do it together with them?