Why This Logo Sucks: Chiquita, Snuggie Explore Low-Quality Limits of Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing your ads may have jumped the shark: Snuggie and Chiquita both recently unveiled winning entrants in ad-creation competitions and the results range from underwhelming to awful.
Both staged promotions in which consumers were asked to dream up their own creative content to promote the companies. Chiquita asked for new stickers for its bananas; Snuggie asked for short films. And both companies then asked everyone to vote for their favorites. When you click on those links to see the contenders, your reaction will likely be similar to that of T.L. Stanley at Brandfreak:
[Snuggie culled] the six truly awful videos (or major steps up from the brand's infomercials, depending on your point of view) that are apparently the "best" of the bunch. Honestly, I couldn't bear to see the cast-offs.Intrigued, I also clicked through and ... Ugh. Here's one of them:
Three of the six feature jokey raps. None involve anyone with the slightest amount of charm or charisma. It's like the contest was restricted to people who have no discernible talent.
It's just as bad over at Chiquita. Can I be the only person who thinks that Freud would not say that sometimes a banana is just a banana if he saw the top vote-getter (top) by Megan Meade C?
And what the hell is this (right)? A giraffe? A cat? It's not a banana, that's for sure.
I've previously raved about crowdsourcing, describing it as a way for brand managers to commoditize creativity, making it virtually free and more abundant. But clearly there are limits. Some brands may be too small, and not have enough passionate followers, to form a talent pool large enough to generate the kind of creativity needed to promote brands effectively. Nice try, Snuggies and Chiquita, but no cigar.
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