I’m not a fan of the Super Bowl and in truth I don’t think the majority of Europeans are. However, this year the sporting cum TV event that grips a continent had a new and broader twist. Often used as the launch pad for new TV advertising (think Bud’s croaking frogs, Apple’s ‘1984’), this year it had not one but four breaking ‘YOU’ adverts.

‘YOU’ adverts are created (idea, filmed and produced) by ‘YOU,’ Joe Public, or the original concept is provided by ‘YOU’ and produced/airbrushed by an advertising agency. Usually run as a competition, they offer an ideal market research and promotional opportunity to advertisers. The prize may be the fame from getting YOUR ad aired to tangible assets.

The huge increase in the number of reality TV programs also embraces the ‘YOU’ ‘in’clusivity in the entertainment experience. Vote people on, vote people off, vote for winners. The mobile phone charge brings revenue to the show and ‘YOU’ the viewer have an impact on the results.

This ‘YOU’ concept has also been embraced online.

Our sister company; rareface.com, used it to select the vodcast presenter for the film première of Scenes of a Sexual Nature. They created a MySpace profile page for SoaSN, invited MySpace friends to submit their entries, and then got them to vote the winners. rareface are also using this technique for their client, Playboy, to get people to submit their competition entries to be Playboy Model UK 2007, and then vote for the winning model.

YouTube initially started highlighting the advertising led-competitions for ‘YOU’ to enter, but they are now becoming so common that it’s back to the advertising company to help promote the links.

An unfortunately renowned example of ‘YOU’ gone wrong is Chrysler’s campaign of late 2006 in which they allowed users to create and instantly publish their own online advert for their cars. 16% of those who took up the challenge used the opportunity to pronounce every negative aspect considered for a 4×4 - from gas guzzlers to road killers. Unfortunately despite 84% having executed positive adverts, public attention was then purely focused on the negative. (Revolution February 2007)

Undertaking a ‘YOU’-centric, quirky campaign has to be well thought out and monitored, with rules and guidelines established, almost the same things that are needed for a blog. Instead of getting your employees to be your public face you are getting potential customers to become the public face.

Setting the guidelines is essential; i.e. only positive endorsements acceptable and the usual terms of reference for a conversation. If you’re not prepared to accept negative attention, criticism, or just plain mockery, make sure the mechanisms supporting your campaign concept don’t leave you exposed.

Laying out clear rules of engagement will help deliver results.

The concept has to be interesting enough to engage users to contribute to a ‘YOU’-focused campaign, and with so many companies on this bandwagon, it will become harder to differentiate.