Companies should be careful with user generated content
Posted 5 February 2008 at 7:49AM by Ian Betteridge in Doing business online
Everyone in business knows that the best kind of marketing is word of mouth. Getting your customers to be your advocates isn't just the cheapest way of getting the messages about your company out there - it's also the most effective.
That's why many companies are interested in using the power of their customers to advertise for them, by using "user generated content" - effectively, adverts which are created by your customers. One great example of this is the "Dear JetBlue" series of ads created by the American low-cost airline of the same name, which took video messages made by real customers about the company and turned them into fantastic ads.
However, using content created by your customers like this does have its potential pitfalls, as sandwich chain Quiznos is now finding out in the US. Arch-rival Subway is currently in the process of suing the company over home-made commercials it asked its customers to submit as part of a competition.
Unfortunately, Quiznos asked its customers to depict its sandwiches as "superior" to Subway's - and now Subway is crying foul, and accusing Quiznos of making false claims. Of course, the thing that differentiates this from the norm is that the content wasn't, in fact, made by Quiznos - it was made by its customers.
The lesson is simple: if you plan on using user generated content to promote your business, be careful over what your customers are saying. Sometimes, even the customers can get too carried away.
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Tags: blogging, bt, bt broadbandoffice, bt tradespace communities, ugc, viral, wom
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