Searching VW
How VW is enabling some consumer control without all the usual mumbo jumbo.
It seems like every conference I go to and blog I read keeps talking about how ‘the consumer is in control.’ It never goes much past that, though, instead relying on the usual cliches. It’s one of those terms that bugs me quite a bit. Depending on how you approach it, either the statement is so obvious it’s maddening (consumers always controlled the purchase) or it’s just a shitty excuse for marketers to create user-generated-content programs and take no responsibility for the results.
None of this is to say I don’t believe the consumer is smarter and more in control than ever before, just that I’m sick of the way the term has played out up to now.
Anyway, if you take a look at the new VW website I think they’ve done a nice job rethinking the idea of consumer control. The redesign includes one big search box and that’s about it. The idea seems to be that the consumer can control their journey, but not necessarily the assets they run into along the way. It seems like an obvious extension for an increasingly idiocentric world (a term I made up a few years ago that I like to pretend has real meaning).
They’re letting people make their own meaning and bring life to brand by the way they put together the puzzle pieces rather than just asking them to create ads. Seems like a way to meet in the middle, no?
Where Do You Want to Drive (On Our Brand Search Engine) Today? …
Here’s a superb example of front-loading a highly useful where do you want to drive today search engine right smack in the center of the front page of a prominent brand website. Thanks to Noah Breyer for bringing this my…
Well, Noah, I can understand it’s buggingly obvious that consumers are in control everywhere. I think another great example is this year’s Superbowl - Not only the fact that consumer-co-created ads scored higher than the other Madison Ave greats, but also because of what happened afterwards.
Case in point - Snickers and GM, Robot. In these cases, it was these very same consumers that decided if these ads should air or not. And they were so powerful that the huge mighty corporations bowed to them. A classic case of who’s really in control here…