Ryan MacMillan

So, carrying on from my last post, let’s take a look at our first two digital media comms predictions from last year; the rise and rise of User Generated Content and the centrality of the authentic human voice.

Well, it can certainly sometimes seem like UGC is all that stands between the 24-hour rolling news media and the hell of dead air. The otherwise contradictory phrase ‘text your photos of this natural disaster to us here at…’ has become ubiquitous as mighty news organisations like the Beeb and CNN realise not only that there are hundreds of people out there who want to contribute, but that their stuff is free, too. Free, on the spot and somehow more vital seeming than the report of a journalist embedded with 25th somewhere outside of Fallujah. That analysis in these cases is thrown over in favor of immediacy and a vaguely distressing authenticity fetish are issues which I imagine news media will have to address closely this coming year: is your channel a clearing house for singularly interesting amateur video or a site of in-depth analysis by smart people who know what they’re talking about? (Or, like Fox News, just neither of these things).

UGC, of course, has reached well beyond its newsy comfort zone in the past 12 months. It is tropologically central to advertising, as well. Where once companies asked for customers to invent a new slogan, now brands demand that their users enter 30 second promos into a competion to play during the Superbowl. And when not that, they want you to name their new soda or guess the flavor of their crisps. Or make your own music videos or science fiction movies. It’s Choose Your Own Adventure but with less adventure and more stuff for the brand to use in future campaigns! On the one hand, it’s fabulously engaging and fun. On the other, it’s cheap, frequently nasty, and leaves one wondering what happened to the ‘experts’ who used to create content…

As for the authentic human voice, I find myself conflicted. There’s no doubt that many brands are trying to talk to their customers as though both sides of the conversation are being had by living, breathing humans, and that’s great. But brands can’t just talk to whomever they want… nor can they present a fun face when their product ain’t so great… whether it’s web2.0-whimsy or the iniquitous Facebook Beacon, it seems to me that what we perhaps ought to have predicted was not so much the ‘authentic human voice’ as the ‘creepy pretend friend’; brands whose attempts at human authenticity, at being ‘one of us’ have simply betrayed a borderline autistic lack of boundaries. The paradox comes in ‘trying’ to be authentic; the contemporary digital consumer has a fairly well developed BS radar. Just ’sounding’ human hasn’t been enough; brands will have to act it, too.

Maybe I’m being a little harsh here?