Georg Cockburn

We’re experiencing an exciting time at the moment, at least in terms of media and advertising, where advertising models seem to be changing from day to day. And there’s a reason for that: The consumer has grown up.

In the past you had to follow the advertising, say on TV, whether you wanted or not. Today you can view your favourite program with a time shift function on Tivo or watch it on demand online. Who wants to see ads in between?

It seems as if the industry has grown up, and with it so have the consumers. They got back a lot of power, witch advertising had taken them away before. And this is something we will see increasing over the next few years. If the user doesn’t want to see an ad, he just zaps away.

This is a very challenging situations for many companies, which have never learnt to give the user part of the power in the game. All of a sudden advertising has to be so engaging that the user wants to see it. And that he comes by himself to see it. Coke Zero for exaple just offers an online game, which is entertaining and engaging for the user. In the best cases companies herewith offer something, which can’t be experienced anywhere else.

The consumer even seems to be a kind of brand manager today, having a word to say when it comes to development of new products or their marketing. Some companies give the user something to say regarding the development of their products: Alpha Romeo recently asked the users to vote for a name for their new car online. The web contest offered online voters a choice of twelve names, and Furiosa got the most votes, beating out Agea, Enos, Everson, Fira, Milo, Mod, Nevo, Solea, Sparvo, Velvetta and Ventura. This shows exactly in which direction we are heading.

Some even pay the user for watching their ads. This is what QTrax does, paying people with free music downloads for watching ads beforehand. AdPerk pays it’s users with credits for free magazine subscriptions. Finally one can think of an online-based platform, on which users can earn real money or free products by gathering bonus points when watching adverts.

However each enterprise reacts, they’ve all noticed how powerful the Grown-Up Consumer is today. Especially the internet with chats and forums has given him a lot of power back. For advertising this means more entertaining formats, more participation and more fun. - As firms partner up with consumers and more and more treat them as equal partners, we will see some engaging new formats forthcoming, to which we can look forward to.