Chevy Tahoe Create-Your-Own-Ad Campaign

Hopefully you didn't miss this but topping the list of stupid web 2.0 ideas was Chevy's create-your-own Tahoe ad series from the Spring of 2006.

Basically Chevy provided the video clips and allowed amateur editors to piece them together in whatever way they saw fit and to then upload them to Chevy's website. As Wired magazine describes it "The wikification of the 30-second spot – what could be more revolutionary than that?" And what could be more web 2.0 than that?

Chevy was clearly setting themselves up for a victory from the collective creative mind of the masses. The volume of the responses was a success as nearly 30,000 renditions were submitted.

But, in result, the publicity came not from the videos that most creatively promoted the Chevy Tahoe and not on the Chevy website at all but of course from the ones bashing everything Tahoe stands for quite openly on YouTube.

And the best part was, the parody ads nearly look professionally created, because Chevy put the fodder for the whole thing right into the creators' hands. Wired has a great article about the whole thing but many of their links to the YouTube videos don't work.

I was able to locate two of my favorites though, these really make me laugh: http://youtube.com/watch?v=foR3sfWu5IQ and http://youtube.com/watch?v=4oNedC3j0e4.