There was further proof this week of the rise in popularity of promoting user generated content to the big time.
An 18 year old English student had his amateur iPod Touch commercial picked up from YouTube and turned in to a bona fide high definition television advert.
Nick Haley, currently a first year student at the University of Leeds, created a homemade advert for the new Apple iPod Touch and casually uploaded it to YouTube, not expecting anything except maybe a few comments and a couple of thousand page views.
Ad Agency Contacted Haley
He did get both of those, but also a lot more, as amongst viewers of the clip were employees at Apple in Cupertino, California, who asked someone from ad agency TBWA/Chiat/Day to get in touch with Mr. Haley and ask him to help produce a professional version of the 30 second advert.
A shocked Nick told the New York Times:
“I was sitting on the bus and I got this e-mail on my phone, the message said, ‘We represent Apple and we’ve seen what you have produced and we’d like a chat with you.’
“This seemed ridiculous and far-fetched. My initial reaction was, someone wanted to steal it.”
He was eventually convinced enough that the message was real to travel to Los Angeles and help work on a full length version of the advert which was due to start airing in the US yesterday, and in Europe and Japan in the near future.
Nick’s Apple iPod YouTube Advert
This is not the first time UGC has been used by big name companies by any means, but it’s the first instance I can recall of someone being approached at random as the result of something they’ve uploaded to a video sharing site.
This kind of thing will only increase too as video sharing sites get even more popular and the production levels of homemade clips improve to an almost professional level.
Ad agencies meanwhile get their pick of some talented people, and a new way of selling a product, all by just searching on YouTube or similar sites for a few minutes each day.
