During a little downtime this week, I have seen three profound examples of user-generated content in action:

1. Today, MarketingSherpa released a new case study on how President's Choice (large Canadian grocer) is leveraging online customer reviews of their private-label products in their stores, circulars, loyalty program, and product lab.  It is well worth the read; it is one of the most powerful multichannel examples that we have worked on with any client to date.  I also encourage you to look at the creative samples they provided.  Note that free access is only available for seven days from the publish date.

2. Yesterday (and again tonight), I saw a new Ford Fusion commercial that uses customer review content from Yahoo! Autos in the ad as the primary selling message.  I think this may be an industry first.  I have seen user-generated content used in many forms, but not actual customer review content on a major television advertisement (it ran on American Idol's session finale tonight – that can't be cheap).  The commercials are branded with Ford's new website: Ford Challenge.  I wrote about General Motors doing something similar last year, but not quite as profound.

3. On Monday, I read an article on Yahoo! about 45 million people globally voting on the new Seven Wonders of the World.   Quick – can you name the historical Seven?  I couldn't, and only one of them survives today.  This is notable news to me for two reasons.  First, 45 million (and one) people globally are now engaged in caring about important historical places in the world (although it somewhat saddens me that, by comparison, 74 million people voted on the new American Idol winner).  Second, it taps into three trends that I have been following: the wisdom of crowds (and crowdsourcing), the power of the new globally connected individual (see Kryptonite mention), and the upheaval of traditional power structures (this one being the intellectuals in 200 BC that selected the historical Seven). 

On that last trend, I am reading David Weinberger's new book, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, which covers this trend extensively.  It is a pretty good read by one of the ingenious authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto (one of my favorite books – I consider Chapter 4 a must-read for marketers).  The basic theme of the book is that the laws of the physical world have constrained the desires of individuals for the purpose of organizing the masses.  For example, you can't dynamically rearrange a physical retail store for a specific niche shopper to make it easy for them, but you can do that online.  This may be obvious to many of you by now, but Mr. Weinberger has a unique style and writes of the history behind (including such topics as the invention of alphabetized lists) and the implications of this very important trend.

I think it is very cool that the Internet has enabled projects that would have never been possible before – like the new seven wonders voting.  Frankly, most would trust the opinion of 45 million people globally than a few intellectuals anyway.

And I was also very happy to see Shop.org announce this week that David Weinberger is one of the four keynotes at the Annual Summit this year in Las Vegas.  I hope to see you there!

The most insightful part of the movie, as it pertains to word of mouth as well as green products, is to watch the reaction of EV1 leasees (all EV1s were leased until GM proved the market potential) when they realize that they can not buy their EV1 under any condition.  They organize, they petition, they beg.  Big name actors like Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, and all other EV1 leasees are turned down.  The organizers get together and offer to buy all of the cars for $1.9 million – their request goes with no answer (according to the movie).  After finding out that the EV1s are being destroyed, they stand outside of the GM parking lot where EV1s are being stored to watch over the cars to make sure that GM doesn't destroy any more.  They literally do this for months on a 24×7 basis.  Talk about love for a car!  It makes iPod owners look downright disloyal.  I guess that is because a car has such a big impact on your life as opposed to an iPod, and the EV1 leasees were so passionately focused on making an impact on the environment.  These consumers were a word-of-mouth revolution waiting to be leveraged by GM.  But, GM being short-term focused like so many companies that are incentivized to think that way due to the short-term nature of making your numbers for Wall Street analysts, completely misses the boat.  [Side note: this short-term focus was really crystallized for me by my friend, Derek Woodgate, who is a corporate futurist and the founder of The Futures Lab, in a discussion we had on why the corporate world needs futurists.  He has a great job, in my opinion, but more on that perhaps later.]

One of the big critiques of the EV1, from a consumer perspective at that time, is the short distance that the car can travel on a full charge (only 55-75 miles on the first generation model, due to the early generation batteries used; but the movie states that the average American only drives 29 miles per day although it doesn't seem like the car was ever marketed to highlight that this range would be sufficient for some 90% of American drivers).  Another critique is the high production cost of $80,000 per vehicle when the lease payments would net around $34,000 to $44,000, obviously a money-losing proposition for GM.  But a former EV1 employee explains that once economies of scale kick in, from good marketing and availability in large metropolitan areas, the production costs would have fallen dramatically and battery technology would have rapidly improved.  This seems like a logical argument to me, especially considering the recent success of the Tesla, which can travel up to 250 miles on a full charge.  It also helps that the Tesla goes 0-60 in 4 seconds and looks like a well-designed sports car.  Unlike the EV1, which had a failed rollout (only leasing 800 units), the Tesla recently sold out their flagship 2007 model in just four months. 

I guess my point here is that GM could have figured it out if they stuck with it, and the consumer emotion evoked by the product was simply incredible.  And I think it is indisputable that GM missed the boat on the launch of hybrids relative to Toyota (who is projected to pass GM in 2007 as the world's largest producer of autos).  In the movie, one of GM's former Board members talks about his support of the EV1 project more from a R&D perspective, given the shift in consumer demand that he saw coming.  The success of hybrids and the launch of the Tesla prove that demand is there, if the marketing is well executed then word of mouth could have done the rest of the work.

What does all of this have to do with the title of my blog post?  Well, I predict that green products are going to be one of the hottest trends for the next decade.  They are ripe for an amazing level of positive word of mouth ("free marketing?").  Obviously coffee and universal access to global information also need little advertising when the product is great (Starbucks invested in their stores and locations, Google invested in the world's best search, and neither invested in advertising – positive word of mouth did that job for them).

There are more and more people that are accepting the consequences of global warming.  Just today, it was reported that another enormous ice shelf broke away in the Canadian Arctic.  As I first predicted in July of 2006, I wrote that the documentary An Inconvenient Truth would be marked as the most impactful documentary in modern history.  After seeing it a month ago for the first time, I have to admit that is a transformational movie.  You simply can't see it and not be emotionally moved by the implication of the evidence presented – it truly is "an inconvenient truth".  If you haven't seen it and want the quick "cheat sheet", this summary is a good place to start.  And 60 Minutes recently had a compelling report – here is an excerpt.

In August, I wrote about Wal-Mart embracing sustainability (and the rapid impact they could have given their immense scale).  And I recently learned (when having coffee with one of their heads of eCommerce) that they include a video on what they are doing about it with every copy of An Inconvenient Truth that they sell.  Here is an example of one of their recent initiatives, among many. 

From Millennials being more socially conscious consumers to Kleiner Perkins investing huge sums of money in alternative energy, there is something major under way here.  There is a shift in consumer demand that is just beginning to be felt (look at the Whole Foods stock rise that I wrote about when reporting on Wal-Mart and sustainability).  Wal-Mart, the largest company in the world, acting early on this shift is a wake-up call for smaller companies everywhere.

The bottom line is that I truly believe when we look back and assess the long-term economic impact of the events of 2006, it will be that the green movement got underway and rolled like a freight train through the economy for the next several decades.  And sparked consumer emotion and word of mouth that had never before been seen.  The stakes are simply too high and too broadly felt for it not to.

If you don't have a green strategy, I suggest you start moving now.  We'll see a lot more green (both green products and the money made off them) in 2007 and beyond.  We can help you rapidly evolve these products by tapping into word-of-mouth analytics and helping you learn what is really resonating (and what isn't) with your customers.

Update on Jan. 2:
I was just catching up on BusinessWeek while at the gym, and noticed that the "green" trend was highlighted in three different "ideas" for the "The Best Ideas of 2006", specifically:

• Super Recycling (also there is a great interview with the CEO of Interface in the good but slanted documentary The Corporation)
• Global Warming
• Green is Good

The only other trend to have as many common ideas is that of user-generated content, a topic near and dear to Bazaarvoice and our clients.  Specifically:

• Trend Mining (one of the many reasons we have invested so heavily in word-of-mouth analytics)
• Get a Second Life (stay tuned for my third Word-of-Mouth Wisdom interview for more on this)
• Free Labor (more on the crowdsourcing, which I have written about often)
• Web 2.0 Goes Corporate

Monday:

Yahoo! has acquired many Web 2.0 / social networking properties in the past year, including del.icio.us, Flickr, Upcoming.org,  and WebJay (plus they are rumored to be shopping for digg).  Yahoo! also launched 360 last March, Shoposphere in November, and Yahoo! Answers in December.  From my perspective, they are turning to social networking as the answer to competition from Google.  At Bazaarvoice, we know that people who write reviews on a retail site return an average of four times just to see if their review posted yet.  This shouldn't be that surprising as the social call-to-action to write a review in the first place would lead one to want to see that their own word-of-mouth actually "went public".  Yahoo!'s strategy seems sound to me as they have a diversified portfolio of services to get users addicted to, and therefore monetize more advertising.  Therefore, the more repeat visits, the better.

So, it makes sense to me that last week Yahoo! announced a contest for users to create their own Yahoo! advertisements.  This is a smart way to generate word-of-mouth for the new Yahoo!  It reminds me of what General Motors did recently for The Apprentice.  Here is my blog entry on that topic.  You may want to check out some of the new Yahoo! user-generated ads – some of them are quite clever and entertaining.  There is a lot of talent out there waiting to be tapped (remember crowdsourcing?).

Update on 8/15: Data released by Neilsen/NetRatings shows visitors to Google-branded sites in July spent less than an hour a month while AOL visitors logged 5 hours 35 minutes and Yahoo! visitors logged 3 hours and 10 minutes.  This made Terry Semel proud, as clearly his diversified media strategy is his core competitive differentiator.  Google visitors are reported to be more like "hunters" while Yahoo!'s are "gatherers".  No doubt this is encouraging for Yahoo!, but what really matters for both Google and Yahoo! is how well they drive customer acquisition for their clients.  Google's entire business model is based on that goal while the majority of Yahoo!'s is (they are more revenue diversified for obvious reasons).  I believe that Yahoo!'s user-generated ads strategy will only drive more awareness of why people need to spend more time on Yahoo!.  Are companies looking for hunters or gatherers?  Obviously the answer is a mixture of both.

Thursday:

Wayne Stribling, our VP of Client Services, sends me this article.  I am struck by two things.  First, this quote:

• "The voice of the customer is actually getting heard by the manufacturers," said Neal Oddes, director of product research and analysis for J.D. Power. "They are understanding what's getting replaced, what's going wrong, and then they're taking that information and designing better products."

Second, the fact that General Motors has two of the brands in J.D. Power's top five most reliable.  This reminds me of my blog entry about the change in General Motors culture brought on by word-of-mouth techniques (such as their blog).  I like the fact that J.D. Power's is now showing quantitative evidence of this change.

I have long believed that the Internet and the power of word-of-mouth will make companies more customer-centric and, therefore, products and services far better than in the past.  An educated consumer serves as a wake-up call – no more being lazy.  Co-creation will generate more sales and customer satisfaction.

Friday:

Google, not to be outdone by Yahoo!, invests $900 million in Rupert Murdoch's MySpace to become their exclusive search engine provider.  Instead of Google creating the social networking properties, like Yahoo! is doing, they decide to partner with the best of them (the traffic growth for MySpace is off the charts).  Here are the words from Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, from his speech at the Search Engine Strategies conference this week:

• But the "development to me that's most interesting is the social networks as online lifestyles. That's a really new phenomenon," [Schmidt] said. It's a phenomenon on scale with the rapid-fire adoption of instant messaging, he added. "It's [social networks] a big deal."

$900 million is a lot of money, no doubt.  But there are two reasons why this makes a lot of sense for Google.  First, eMarketer announced that ad growth on social networking sites will grow astronomically ($280 million in 2006 to $1.9 billion in 2010).  Second, MySpace is the favorite destination for the IM Generation, which all marketers will need to learn how to advertise to.  They distrust traditional advertising (and companies) more than any other generation (because they are the most educated, due to the Internet), and they turn to their friends for recommendations (i.e. word-of-mouth) more than any other generation.  For more research, see my blog entry on the IM Generation.

Pivotal changes are underway… and that creates a tremendous amount of opportunity for marketers if they navigate these new waters correctly.

However, the highlight of this conference was the panel discussion immediately following mine, named "Engaged Markets: Social Media" facilitated by Pete Blackshaw and Max Kalehoff of Neilsen BuzzMetrics.  Their panelists included Michael Wiley from General Motors and Curt Hecht from GM Planworks.  Michael is the Director of New Media at GM Communications and is responsible for launching the GM FastLane Blog, where Bob Lutz, GM's Vice Chairman, regularly blogs and gives GM a "more human feel".  Curt Hecht is Executive Vice President at GM Planworks, which handles all buying and planning for GM's more than $3 billion annual spend in advertising.

This blog post by Dan Farber at ZDNet does a great job of summarizing the highlights of the panel discussion.  I blogged about GM in April, hypothesizing that a revolutionary in their approach to advertising may be underway.  After hearing Michael and Curt talk, I am now confident that my hypothesis is more concrete.  These guys really get it.  Here are some of my favorite quotes from the panel (from the blog by Dan Farber):

• In the context of the social media explosion, Michael Wiley, GM director of new media, didn't hold back. "The existing ad paradigm sucks, it's woefully inefficient. It takes huge dollars to create ads on TV that run for 30 or 60 seconds and give the consumer virtually no information," Wiley said. "The opportunity is to create relatively grassroots ads, six to eight minutes long that give an in-depth brand experience and are released online."
• "Instead of GM producing ads online, we could use testimonials in existing online content as our advertising vehicles moving forward," [Michael Wiley] added.  "Why not serve those up instead of a contrived advertisement." 
• Wiley also said a secret to GM's success is listening to conversations, including the negative comments. GM has blogs and comments on posts [that] frequently bash and criticize the company's products. "You need to be open to criticism and willing to [engage] detractors," Wiley said. "Businesses like GM need to fundamentally change the way they operate. Customer engagement and every customer's opinion counts is just beginning. For years and years you could keep the squeaky wheel happy…now they can talk to a millions of people. The process to change the way business is done is slow process…and still mostly old way of doing business that has been around for 40 years."
• …the voice could be larger than the Wall Street Journal [in influencing purchase decisions]. We just need to find the brand advocates," [Curt Hecht said].
• "We will continue to see the existing power structure subverted," Wiley said. "It's a period of upheaval, and I am confident it will just get better over the next few years," Wiley concluded.

Michael also talked about the effectiveness of their "Google Pontaic" campaign as well as their campaign to point shoppers to Edmunds to compare Chevrolet's features versus competitive models.  The goal here is to say to potential customers, "we know you don't trust us and consider us a stodgy old-world company – so here is some third party credibility that is easy for you to find and mostly consumer-generated" (that's my not so great paraphase, not his actual words).

It was also very interesting to see Ed Keller's groundbreaking research on the word of mouth "all-stars" (the most talked about brands in America in a net positive context).  Chevrolet was #5 on the list.  No other domestic car company was on the top-ten list.  GM is doing something right.

If this doesn't make the authors of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" smile, I'm not sure what would.  Actually, one of them was in the audience and I publicly thanked him for inadvertently helping me come up with the name for our company.  Unfortunately, I didn't see him smile back at me.  Maybe it was my comment about most domain names being taken!

Happy 4th of July and God bless America!     

- from "The History of Great American Turnarounds", 2929 Entertainment, aired on Jan. 5, 2025

This is probably old news to some of you, but I find it fascinating that Chevrolet is allowing consumers to create their own ads for the new Tahoe.  As you can imagine, some consumers have created some very critical ads.  However, I applaud General Motors for finally taking some risk.  I'm sure the authors of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" would also applaud this bold move.

There is no doubt in my mind that we will see more of this.  This is the start of an open and honest dialogue between General Motors and their customers.  Is the dialogue always going to positive?  Of course not.  It isn't always positive offline, but it is too easy for General Motors to ignore private customer-to-customer conversations.  It is a bit different when the conversations are out in the open, staring them in the face.

Sam Decker calls this "customer oxygen".  No matter what you call it, it is healthy.  I have long believed that a company should design its products with customers.  That may sound obvious, but it's not.  I created Coremetrics, a successful Web analytics business, based on the premise that companies like Accrue and NetGenesis had failed to do this.  And their customers defected quickly.

Then I read Ron Bloom's, the CEO of Podshow, article on "advertising 2.0".  Outside of the fact that there are too many 2.0 terms, I agree with Ron that advertising must evolve.  We are more cynical than ever about advertising because we are more educated.  If you are reading this blog, you are likely far more educated about marketing than most consumers.  And you are probably much more likely than most consumers to ignore advertising altogether – skip it with your TIVO, read news online via an RSS feed, get the straight scoop from your friends.  The question is – what form of marketing works or is going to work on you?  Is it "keeping up with The Joneses" all over again?  Only this time, you actually trust "The Joneses" more than you trust any corporation.

Every social networking, blogging, user-generated content, "authentic media", and Web 2.0 company has a common goal in mind: monetize their business model with advertising.  There are a ton of venture-capital and public-market dollars chasing this aim.  My bet is that several will evolve entirely new forms of advertising.  For some, the bets are already paying off.  Last I heard, Facebook is making over $10 million per month on advertising and the buzz is that it may be acquired for as much as $2 billion.  And you probably heard what Rupert Murdoch's #2 is publically saying about their acquisition of MySpace, "MySpace is the single biggest growth opportunity this company has".  Considering the Murdoch empire and the newness of social networking, that is a pretty mind-blowing statement.

In full disclosure, my wife, Debra, just bought a new GM SUV after trading in her Volkswagen SUV, an unfortunate lemon of lemons (it actually pains me to write that after many years of loyalty to Volkswagen).  I also bring this up because I found myself genuinely impressed with the 2007 redesign of the model she bought, and I wonder if Bob Lutz and his team are really starting to figure it out by listening.  It is the first American car that we have ever bought.  Imagine how odd it would be to read that statement if we lived in the 1950's instead of the 2000's.