Agency Remake of Consumer Generated Spot
Companies adopting and/or advocating consumer generated content has become a fairly common approach for advertising messaging. As a way to engage the customer in a relationship with a brand, this approach is one of dialog, not monolog.
While some of the work that comes from this approach contains very genuine ideas, inventive stories and can be a great expression of the brand soul, it’s often a bit rough around the edges from a quality standpoint.
So I wasn’t real surprised to read a story today in the NYTimes.com about Apple and TBWA/Chiat/Day’s remake of a student’s ad for the iPod Touch. 18-year-old English student and Apple devotee named Nick Haley created a spot set to “Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex” by a Brazilian band CSS and uploaded it to YouTube, where it caught the attention of Apple who in turn asked the agency to contact Mr. Haley and create a remake. Below is his original on YouTube.
So here’s this 18 year-old kid, who has never been to the States, who gets to work on a broadcast-ready version of his spot with creative executives at TBWA/Chiat/Day. Pretty cool. And according to the NYTimes story, the agency stayed true to Haley’s concept — just adding the polish.
For a college freshman studying politics, this had to be a pretty awesome experience.
The new spot starts airing this weekend on football games Sunday afternoon, on “Desperate Housewives” and Game 4 of the World Series.
UPDATE 10/29/2007: Here’s the actual professional remake.
This post was written by: Kim Mickelsen