Chevrolet have had an interesting baptism of fire in trying something new online. Someone, somewhere in Cherolet Marketing department, decided a campaign that involved Tahoe drivers in creating their own commercial would be a good idea.

The creative brief probably spoke of "building commiunity", and "engaging users" etc etc. The campaign, is here and the results are here.

The way it works, is that the apprentice is asked to add some pre-packaged Tahoe pictures, and pre-selected music, and they stuff it together into a commercial. After you are done, I have no idea where the commercial goes, because it took me out to NBC and Donald Trump … huh?

Anyhow, some creative people have taken it further, creating their own commercials talking about Tahoe as a "pretective cocoon" while you travel through the environmentaly dead countryside, all the time using enormous amounts of the limited supply of oil.

So what went wrong here. As noted at the Church of the Customer:

This campaign was designed to encourage a mass audience to spread messages. It wasn't designed with loyal and evangelistic Tahoe owners in mind. Heck, even the word "campaign" reflects the impetus of mass advertising and message control.

And looking to the new rules, here is #1 from Pinko Marketing.

Pinko Marketing is about the end of the Marketing Manager, Director and anyone else who thinks they have control over the message, market or 'brand'

Relevance to Bankwatch:

Internet is a new world. Its essential to embrace it in your marketing, but its essential you do not try to use old approaches to this new medium. It will at best fail, and at worst, as in this case, backfire.