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Kayak.com Trip Idea #406 - Lubbock, TX

So Kayak.com is having a contest for people to create an ad for them staying within their ad agencies theme of "there are a million reasons to travel. . ." The ones that ad agency did are actually pretty funny [http://corp.kayak.com/tv/] and I went through a couple of the submissions on youtube [like the one posted here]. Most are forgettable, but a couple are gems. If you win you get a free trip to NYC [I should try for it!! waaiiiitttt] to watch your ad being made.

I like that kayak.com said "Our goal is not to offend or push any agenda: just to catch your attention and make you laugh." That really follows in google's footsteps of "Don't be evil" and just go with the flow. I also think it's a very liberal approach to advertising and I appreciate that. Getting bogged down in legalities can sometimes hinder creativity. Some of them are pretty racey, like making fun of Dick Cheney's hunting accident, but they make fun of Kerry as well so it's pretty much the South Park philosophy of we'll offend everyone equally to it's okay.

Chevrolet tried this same idea a while ago with their 2007 Tahoe launch asking people to create ads as well. This completely backfired with people touching on how the Tahoe is a gaz guzzling, environmental hurting piece of machinery. [See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXehk1H2q5c ] Any PR is good PR right? Maybe not in this case.

Consumer generated media is causing quite the buzz in the marketing environment these days, with viral videos swirling around the web such as the one with Diet Coke and Mentos [http://www.eepybird.com/]. Diet Coke and Mentos reacted to this video in completely opposite ways--Mentos thought it was a godsend and completely supported these guys while Diet Coke blatantly ignored it. The thing with CGM is that it's fast and you have to react quickly and risk taking is a must. Unfortunately for Diet Coke, they probably lack the ability and the forsight to take advantage of something like this. However, they were in the works of launching their own viral video sight called the Coke Show [cocacola.com]. Imagine how much traffic they could have gottenif they put the Diet Coke Mentos video on their site?? Basically, the coke show is a pretty lame attempt to create passion about this brand. I think it's just unbelievable that Coke from corporate America would sign on to something like this. Coke is not cutting edge so I have a hard time seeing the fit with viral videos. Also, I find it a very unfascinating product that produces very little passion [atleast in me. . .]. Kayak.com is kind of corky and cool [indie perhaps?] and I can see how people could be passionate about making and ad for them. Plus kayak.com put some constraints around the ads, without constricting creative freedom. Letting people loose to do whatever they want is not only risky, but can probably lead to a lot of crap. [maybe I'm wrong and either way can lead to a lot of crap??]

The marketing environment in the future is definitely going to be interesting and hopefully big corporations can keep the pace. I guess we'll see.