The big buzz for the last year has been about content created by the masses, leading Time Magazine to name “You” as the Person of the Year for 2006, and Advertising Age to award last year’s Ad Agency of the Year to “The Consumer.” While fan filmmakers have spent years creating content often perceived as free promotion for major companies, the concept of consumer-generated content as a legitimate marketing tool took a big leap into prime time with Sunday’s Super Bowl, where four brands (Doritos, Chevy, Alka-Seltzer and the NFL) presented ads that were produced–or at least envisioned by–mere plebians like you and me.

With CBS charging $2.6 million for 30 seconds of airtime, the brands were definitely counting on the ‘fan-created’ tag to add a little heat to their ad campaigns; after all, that’s not money you throw around.

At the same time, however, the very act of doing so inherently dismissed consumer-generated content as a mere fad (and to be fair, perhaps it ought to be a passing fancy, as there’s a lot of bad material out there). Additionally, to label the ads as “fan-created,” as a few marketers have, is insulting to fandom, regardless of your particular passion. Are there NFL fans? Sure. Chevy fans? Judging from the multitude of car decals with that lame Calvin clone urinating on a Ford symbol, I guess there must be.

Doritos fans? Uhh, maaaaaybe. I can’t picture it, but perhaps there’s some guy in Utah who collects old Doritos bags or something (here in New York, we call ‘em psychos). The brand’s ad, “Checkout Girl,” was hardly an amateur production, however, as it was created by Kristin Dehnert, a location manager and scout for commercials in Los Angeles, who assembled a professional crew and shot four different ads for Doritos’ “Crash the Super Bowl” contest.

OK, so that’s a nice story. But “fans” of Alka-Seltzer? Who are they kidding? The only fan of Alka-Seltzer is the guy who got paid big bucks to say ‘Let’s hand it over to the consumers.’

So how do these ads affect fan filmmakers? It’s a double-edged sword: On one hand, it’s a good thing, because the viewing public gets a (rare) positive way to associate the word “fan” with a production of sorts, even if the ads stretch the concept of “fan films” to the breaking point. On the other hand, many fan filmmakers make their flicks in part to use as calling cards to the TV, movie and ad industries, but if Sunday’s ads turn out to be turkeys, Madison Avenue will surely be less interested in fan films, no matter how snazzy they may be. For now, however, this barrage of “fan-made ads” is likely an abberation until their effectiveness with consumers can be properly measured. If they don’t have much impact, don’t count on seeing an avalanche of me-too, user-created marketing any time soon. If they do work, though, it might be time to brush up that demo reel.

There’s a great article in the Detroit Free Press about the fledgling “user-created” phenomena, the best line in it coming from Mark Stevens, author of Your Marketing Sucks, who, they sagely observe, is “skeptical” of the trend: “In years past, I’ve called the Super Bowl the Stupid Bowl. But this year, because of the whole ‘user movement,’ I’m calling it the Moron Bowl, because agencies are admitting they have no ideas.”

See update here.

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