Theme 4

I selected a paper Understanding consumer conversations around ads in a Web 2.0 world by Colin Campbell, Leyland F. Pitt, Michael Parent, and Pierre R. Berthon (Journal of Advertising). It's mentioned that user-generated content poses a problem when it takes the form of advertising. Consumer-generated (CG) advertising challenges scholars to understand consumers’ responses to ads and to the responses of other consumers, and, of course, the implications these may have for various brands. Traditional research methods (a viewer response testing) could be limited when the viewer becomes a part of the particular conversation. This exploratory research has an aim  to interpret the conversations consumers have around CG ads using their comments. The authors showed how conversations around ads could be mapped and interpreted, and then developed a typology of consumer-generated ad conversations.

They gathered information making analysis of user comments posted to an ad’s Web page (YouTube) in an effort to find meaning of consumer responses. CG ads on YouTube can range broadly in topic and one can get everything from the video’s content and  its production, the brand, the video’s author, the comments of other viewers and many other things. The authors introduced the content analysis software Leximancer for the comprehension of advertising feedback that came from understanding conversation around CG advertising, especially targeted at recognized brands. They draw conclusions from this analysis, and explained the technique’s broader applicability.

Content analysis of CG ads showed that consumers have four basic motivations for creating and broadcasting ads: intrinsic enjoyment, self-promotion, perception change, and a combination of all three motivations. Their purpose was to demonstrate a new text analysis tool called Leximancer, which is considered to be a relatively elementary but powerful device for interpreting complex textual communications. Content analysis is an important element of media evaluation/media analysis and is not limited as to the types of variables that could be measured or the context in which the messages are created. Based on data of the text analysis they developed four response archetypes to CG ads, which were termed the inquiry, the laudation, the debate, and the flame.

Content analysis approach to the mapping of unique viewer conversations about CG ads has a number of limitations. Firstly, the authorship of both the ads and comments examined are unknown due to the anonymity of the Internet. Obviously it is completely possible that companies have already  begun seeding the Internet with content to their benefit. Secondly, this study could be very subjective and  relies on human interpretation as all qualitative research tools do. Moreover, it might be argued that mapping makes  interpretation of complex human interaction easier, but the evident fact remains that other advertising researchers might see things in the maps that differ from the construals in this research. And finally the analysis only considered four ads. By the way, and a number of checks on reliability and validity have not been carried out.  It means that we have a lot of unanswered questions.

In the paper Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses  Ylva Fernaeus and Mattias Jacobsson formed a concept of actdresses. It seems to be a sort of physical markings that can be directly attached to a digital artefact, which represents some property, action and behaviour of the artefact. They provided three short interaction scenarios designed for different kinds of robotic artefacts. I found it interesting to read how people personalize their digital devices and play with the robotic animals, e.g. by naming it etc.

I think robotics is going to be the third technological wave after social networks and mobile technologies. In the future we will be surrounded by the world of “smart devices”.