Evaluate your risk tolerance
Then bring more people in on the fun.
The popularity of user-generated content has brand managers scrambling to get in on the act. But before you invite the world to create your next commercial, have a very serious look at the risks and rewards and decide if you can take it. Ask your PR people for their expertise. Weeks of good PR can reap bigger rewards than one 30-second ad might, but you don't want to go to your PR team after the fact, looking for input on crisis management. Just because your brand officially reject a user-generated campaign doesn't prevent it from getting more exposure than the one you select. YouTube can bring feast or famine. That's why some people play the stock market and others buy bonds.
Take a look at these examples from Nike and Bravo. Nike provides more than enough clips of Team Nike strutting, slamming, passing and crashing the boards to create your own Nike music video. Nike shot all this content to meet its own standards for quality then added the "Send to Friend" and "Send to Phone" viral components.
Nike's Second Coming
Bravo added a few tools that will be familiar to anyone who has used iMovie or Windows Movie Maker but offers the same high-quality content to mash up. Bravo also adds new clips to choose from as new shows are aired.
Bravo's mash-up
There are way too many examples floating around of user-generated content gone bad to even address, though I'm quite sure Dove didn't intend to have a tattooed biker singing about parts of his anatomy that are now silky smooth thanks to its Cream Oil Body Wash. Given a slow news week and a 24-hour news cycle, just about anything on YouTube can end up on CNN.
