Professor Leyland Pitt on Studio 4 with Host Fanny Kiefer: “Mutated Advertising” thrives in Web 2.0 World

Beedie School of Business marketing professor Leyland Pitt recently spoke with Studio 4 Television and host Fanny Kiefer about a new study which looks at the impact of “mutant” ads that can affect customers’ views of major international brands.

The new study from Simon Fraser University argues that this new wave of digital advertising – user-generated ads that are posted to social media channels such as YouTube – has profound implications for brand managers and advertisers, given the wide range of variables that can impact how a user-generated advertisement is interpreted. As a result, firms have to think seriously about their response when their brands are targeted online.

Published in the spring issue of the Journal of Advertising and entitled “Understanding Consumer Conversations Around Ads in a Web 2.0 World,” the study shows how conversations around ads in digital media can be mapped and interpreted.

The researchers – Leyland Pitt and Michael Parent of SFU’s Beedie School of Business, Colin Campbell of Monash University in Melbourne, and Pierre Berthon of the McCallum School of Business at Bentley College in Massachusetts – note that within the “noise” of online conversation, there are thousands of words, multitudes of conflicting voices and countless market conversations that have significant ramifications for companies and their brands.

The rules of advertising have changed dramatically since the surge of popularity in social media, which in turn is forcing firms to rethink how they reach consumers online. Not only are audiences consuming video via non-traditional media, but in a major shift facilitated by inexpensive media software, they are also creating the content.

See the interview in its entirety on YouTube:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxM35zaddDk

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Caty5XTac&feature=related