We’ve had consumer-generated advertising for awhile, but now the marketers are starting to use the process of working with consumers to develop better marketing campaigns. Ban deodorant ran ads in Teen People and Cosmo Girl asking girls between the age of 12 and 20 to help them create ads by submitting images and suggestions of how to apply the tag line. From 4,000 entries, 9 images will be selected to appear in a print ad to run in US Weekly in March 2006.

WSJ.com – Marketers’ New Idea: Get the Consumer To Design the Ads by Suzanne Vranica (subscription required).

Consumer-product companies followed a simple formula: "you explained the benefit and explained the product and they would buy it," he adds. "Now it’s about getting her to feel like she is involved. No more one-way messaging." The ads created by young consumers will carry each creator’s first name, last initial, and home town. They’ll also have a slightly homegrown feel, because Ban plans only to tweak the language and do minor retouching.

A similar effort is behind ads for the videogame Sims 2, from Electronic Arts Inc. EA decided to play on videogamers’ liking for making short films based on scenes from games. These amateur movies are known in the gaming world as Machinimas. EA brought 15 gamers to its Redwood City, Calif., headquarters to make the films, which became the basis of TV, online and print ads that began appearing in October.

"I pay more attention to ads that are created by people who actually love a product rather than some ad the company creates,” says Jennifer Clark, a 34-year-old gamer from San Jose Calif., who crafted one of EA’s ads.