“I could’ve come up with that.”

I’d be willing to bet that most people who have watched commercials on television (or, for that matter, shows on television, and probably movies or books as well) have either uttered that phrase themselves or heard someone say it in a dismissive tone.

But when consumers are actually encouraged to create their own content, the end product is almost always abysmal.

Here are three recent examples that reinforce the idea.

1. The ketchup conundrum
   Today’s New York Times features an article about the difficulty that the Heinz ketchup company is having as they endeavor to find some consumer-created commercials for their product. By and large the submissions have been gross, incomprehensible, gross and incomprehensible, completely irrelevant, or just too long (the “30 seconds” directive seemed to have been disregarded in many cases).

   This advertising executive’s summary says it all:

   “These are just so bad,” said Linda Kaplan Thaler, chief executive of the Kaplan Thaler Group, an advertising agency in New York that is not involved with Heinz’s contest.

   Why is it that consumer generated commercials like these miss the mark by so wide a margin? It’s difficult to say, but it may be reasonable to assume that many, if not most, entrants are more interested in “winning,” rather than, as one might expect, possibly creating a new career for themselves in creating media:

   Dan Burke, who brushed his teeth and shaved with ketchup, [...] said he hoped the vulgarity would help his video stand out. A 20-year-old college student in Centerville, Ohio, Mr. Burke wants to win and to use the prize money to attend a two-year training program in wrestling.

   He described his strategy: “I just thought to myself, ‘What is the single strangest thing I can do with ketchup?’”

   Advertising agencies, as a general rule, try to put out commercials and promotions that are appealing and engaging specifically because they are paid to do so–they have some motivation to make sure their campaigns work. Consumers, on the other hand, do not. A consumer like Dan Burke has no association with Heinz and no real reason to care if people buy more Heinz ketchup–he is probably more interested in winning the contest and a small amount of money and infamy (”Yeah, I’m the guy who shaved with ketchup on TV.”).

2. Project Greenlight hits the brakes
   Project Greenlight, the television series created by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, ran for three seasons–the first two on HBO and the third on Bravo. Its concept was simple but inspired: Let’s help aspiring filmmakers break into the business. (In so many words, Affleck and Damon said early on that they felt that the show was a way for them to “give back” to wannabe filmmakers because they felt lucky to have done so well for themselves.)

   Writers were encouraged to submit screenplays to the show. From these scripts, a winning screenwriter was selected, and production of the movie commenced. The first season of the series took a kind of an “auteur” approach, with Pete Jones, the winning screenwriter, also serving as director of the film. The second and third seasons split the contest in half, selecting both a winning screenplay and a winning director (chosen based on short sample films submitted).

   Unfortunately the results were less than inspired. All three movies ultimately produced as part of Project Greenlight were miserable box office failures and were critically panned:

   Dennis Lim of the Village Voice on Stolen Summer, the first Project Greenlight release: “Made with no discernible craft and monstrously sanctimonious in dealing with childhood loss.”

   Overall consensus (from RottenTomatoes.com): 4.9 out of 10.

   Ruthe Stein of the San Francisco Chronicle on The Battle of Shaker Heights, the second Project Greenlight release: “The movie is bad in a boring way: tepidly paced, disjointed and lacking any emotional hook.”

   Overall consensus (from RottenTomatoes.com): 5.2 out of 10.

   Dennis Harvey of Variety on Feast, the third and final Project Greenlight release: “Basically throwing together familiar horror ideas without focusing on any in particular, Feast hopes its wild tone will compensate for the lack of distinctive characters or ideas.”

   Overall consensus (from RottenTomatoes.com): 5.8 out of 10.

   The reason these films failed is probably due, in large part, to the simple fact that Project Greenlight is, at its core, a contest, just like the Heinz competition. Watching the series, it’s clear that there were conflicting interests at play–Matt Damon, for instance, who was Feast director John Gulager’s biggest booster, clearly felt strongly about the eccentric director, possibly because Mr. Damon felt that he’d make for good television, whereas Mr. Damon’s cohorts weren’t so keen on Gulager (especially when he bombed his interview with them, stumbling over his words and looking generally inept). Was this selection made at the expense of the film? Perhaps, though it’s impossible to say.

   Once again, the contest aspect got in the way of generating truly good (in this case, quasi-)consumer-created content. The complicating factor in the case of Project Greenlight was the task of creating entertaining television, which certainly didn’t bode well–bizarre personalities play better in “reality” television, whereas a director with a less interesting personality bypassed for the small screen might have produced a far superior product.

   San Francisco Chronicle critic Ruthe Stein repeats my thesis here at the close of her article:

   In the TV series, one of the producers muses that if “The Battle of Shaker Heights” bombs at the box office, as “Stolen Summer” did, Miramax may decide there aren’t any talented budding filmmakers outside Hollywood. But that can’t be the case. Like ballplayers and criminals, the “Project Greenlight” gang should be given a third chance before they strike out.

   Unfortunately we all know how that story ended. HBO pulled the plug on the series and Bravo renewed it for what proved to be its final season.

3. The same old song and dance
   There have been a couple of other competitions similar to Project Greenlight that have come and gone, each resulting in dismal end products.

   Bravo’s eight-part series Situation: Comedy whittled a pool of ten thousand scripts down to two. The winning screenwriters of each script created a pilot, and the home viewing audience voted on which of the two pilots deserved to be picked up by network television³³. The winner (there’s that word again) received $25,000 and a talent agent.

   Fox just started running a Mark Burnett-produced series On The Lot, which combines elements of Project Greenlight (e.g., a pool of candidates selected on the merits of their short video submissions, allegedly) with The Apprentice (e.g., tasks that must be completed satisfactorily or else the ax of elimination swings down) and American Idol (e.g., Internet users can visit the On The Lot website to vote on their favorites). Again, with a few exceptions, the content just hasn’t met Hollywood standards–while there are some creative stand-outs, most of the content submitted by users is ill-timed, executed poorly, or of interest only to the subject’s family. And, as with virtually any contest of this nature, there are plenty of examples of blatant self-promotion that just don’t make any sense.

   In both of these cases, the fact that the entire process is a contest biases the entries. The fact that a quasi-documentary series is tacked on top complicates matters even more. Reality television, after all, isn’t truly a reflection of reality, as it is routinely manipulated by producers for maximum impact.

I have to emphasize that I don’t think it’s impossible to get decent submissions out of consumers–it is, as a general rule, though, no easy task. Individuals who are truly devoted to the craft of media production tend to gravitate to the field regardless of the rewards. There are plenty of excellent filmmakers who toil in relative obscurity and shun contests like these for fear that they would compromise their integrity.

The key issue here is that the idea of winning biases consumer-generated media. Anyone with a video camera, in theory, has the same chances of winning a contest that anybody else does. Usually the judges of such contests have their own biases–in some cases, they might be looking for something with shock value, while in other cases they might be looking for someone with genuine talent and a knack for storytelling. Entries, then, run the gamut, as it’s impossible to predict what, exactly, a company like Purina or Heinz or Stella Artois might want to see in a user-generated commercial.

If media companies truly want to farm undiscovered and unique talent, they need to start scrutinizing sites like YouTube and the countless videoblogs (vlogs?) that have sprung up over the past few years. There is genuine talent out there, to be sure, but there’s so much unworthy media cluttering up the Internet (and, by extension, shows like Project Greenlight or On The Lot) that it is oftentimes difficult to find new makers of media that are truly inspired.3

1. NBC passed, apparently, on both pilots, as the series vanished without a trace almost as suddenly as it had appeared.333

3