Share the Brand: Communally-Embedded Consumer Generated Content

We consider whether consumer-generated content (CGC) can mimic the conventions of advertising. Within the Jones Soda and Mozilla Firefox brand communities, we employ participant observation and conduct depth interviews with community members and firm employees in order to examine CGC and firm-authored content. We show that CGC is collectively created, disseminated and distilled within consumer brand communities. Also, our data show that CGC is effective and comparable to artifacts produced by professionals. The firms we studied recognize CGC's potential and leverage their evangelical users to create artifacts that are woven into the strategy for the brand.