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What is Consumer Generated Marketing?

Consumer generated marketing describes the directly-involved participation of an audience in the marketing activities of a business (/ brand), where participation is usually encouraged and directed by the business (/brand). Consumers might participate, for example by coming up with ideas for a new product (for example – Dell), by coming up with ideas for an advertising campaign (for example, 1 – iPod, 2- McDonalds, and 3 – Dell), by making suggestions about where the brand should be heading (for example – Starbucks) and more.
(What is consumer generated media? Here)

Advantages of Consumer Generated Marketing

• Consumers know what they like. Lots of consumers can decide what sort of ice-cream, for example, they like. The more feedback, the better the chance of developing a popular product. 
• The more ideas (from more contributors) for an advertising campaign, the greater the chance that the advertising campaign will be a success. 
• Although audiences like advertising (and entertainment) that is well executed and clever, often they like advertising (and entertainment) that isn’t (i.e they often prefer, as a change, content that appears more ad lib than manufactured). 
• Consumers can have important role in development of marketing strategy in general. 

Disadvantages

• Brands should offer something beyond customers’ expectations. Shouldn’t brands try and come up with products and services that are original and different, and beyond customers’ expectations i.e. egg-and-bacon ice-cream for ice-cream (sounds crazy but egg-and-bacon ice-cream is a popular choice in The Fat Duck, one of the UK’s leading restaurants ).
• Ideas for adverts should be handled by experts. People in advertising will ensure that the advert is relevant (from a marketing perspective) to audiences in general. Not just this, but that the advert is different and stands out from the crowd, creatively. 
• Marketing Strategies can be complicated. A consumer might come up with a good marketing idea for a brand, but how does this idea fit in with other marketing ideas, as well as the long and short-term business goals of the company, and so on?

Do you have any favourite examples of user generated marketing?
Do you think that consumer generated marketing can work as well for small businesses as for large businesses?

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