Advertisers grapple with consumer online revolution

CANNES, France, June 24: Consumers are hijacking top global brands using blogs and online communities but advertising companies are trying to find ways to embrace the revolution rather than fight against it.

The Internet has turned the traditional world of advertising on its head with a growing shift of spending to online from print and TV. The Web is giving millions of consumers an outlet for their views on products and brands, bypassing traditional media.

The Web is posing a fresh challenge to top firms eager to promote their products and enhance their image, against a tide of spoof advertising made by amateurs on the web.

''The power of the consumer being in control is scary if you come from a traditional marketing world,'' said Chris Dobson, vice president of international ad sales for Microsoft Corp's online business group.

''There is a risk for brands,'' he added. ''There is nowhere to hide online now.'' The issue has been the most hotly debated topic at this year's weeklong Cannes Lions international advertising festival, where 8,000 industry executives convened.

''Our audience has gone from watching commercials to making them,'' said Mark Tutssel, the chief creative officer for Leo Burnett Worldwide, a division of Publicis.

''We've gone from monologue to dialogue in a nanosecond,'' he added. ''Marketers are no longer in control. The consumer is.'' The discussion has been fuelled by the rapid popularity of such Web sites as YouTube, which allows consumers to upload and share videos. The free service only started late last year and is already a brand recognized and used globally by millions.

AMATEUR VIDEO Teenagers are filming their own commercials, which are not always to the brand owner's liking, and spreading them virally. One amateur video, for example, showing two men dropping Mentos candies into Diet Coke, a combination that created spectacular geysers, has attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Even if such efforts are seen as negative marketing, however, some ad executives believe companies at this point should aspire to have consumers tinkering with their brands.

''If you can't get them to do something with them, you've almost failed,'' said Harold Sogard, vice-chairman of Goodby Silverstein&Partners, the Omnicom Group-owned firm renowned for its ''Got Milk'' campaign. ''And if you fight against it, that's only going to get a backlash.''

General Motors Corp's Chevy Tahoe, in a tie-in with the US version of reality TV show ''The Apprentice'', tried to embrace the trend, and invited consumers to submit their own ads as part of a contest. About 16 per cent of the 22,000 entries were negative, including many from disgruntled environmentalists, but 5.5 million people interacted with a related Web site.

''Citizen media and consumer generated content are here to stay, so marketers must learn to let go of the control they think they have over their brand in the open marketplace of ideas,'' Tutssel said.

''There is return on investment in being courageous,'' he added.

Other big advertisers, such as Walt Disney Co. and Pepsi-Cola have begun advertising on the popular MySpace social networking site, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., while Toyota and Wendy's have sponsored microsites on smaller rival Bolt Media.

JWT, the world's largest and America's oldest ad agency, bought all the ad space on the popular and irreverent Huffingtonpost.com site for the week of the ad festival to showcase commercials it has made for clients, and position itself as a hip firm that understands the changing marketplace.

It was hoping that visitors to the site would send the commercials, which include ones for Ford, JetBlue and Levi's, to friends using email or instant messaging.

''Together we hope to further blur the lines between traditional advertising and new media,'' said JWT Chairman and CEO Bob Jeffrey.

Arianna Huffington, the syndicated columnist and former California gubernatorial candidate, suggested the shift for advertisers to a two-way conversation with consumers, no matter how swiftly it may have come, was inevitable.

''Imagine a relationship where you were the only one doing the talking,'' she said. ''How long would it last?''

Reuters