ABSTRACT
A consumer-created advertising revolution, supported by image literate pro-sumers,personal computers, homespun creativity, and a YouTube distribution channel, iscreating a buzz in contemporary advertising circles (Yohn, 2006; Klaassen, 2007; Walker, 2006). Running shoe brand, Converse, created a popular website housing video clips created by brand devotees documenting, in creative and heartfelt ways, their relationships to their ‘Chucks’. Doritos, a taco chipmaker, aired the winner of their consumer-created promotional contest during the expensive 2007 Super Bowl time slot. Global brands, General Motors, and Master Card, use consumers’ grass roots creative content. McCraken (2006) argues that these ‘co-creations’ are part of a branding reformation. Advertising agency creatives, once the cardinals of promotion, he argues, now must share power with a generation of consumers who have the technology and interest to play a role in the brands that surround them.
