14 DAY TRIAL // KFC is now using YouTube to obtain several homemade clips that will allow them to build exciting commercials for the company. According to the Earth Times, the commercials will be rolled out on Tuesday at the American Idol. Although this is quite a cheap way to build adverts for your company because KFC will pay a limited amount of money for the content included in the adverts, it's difficult to obtain the approval of all the users appearing in the clips.
"The idea of using consumer-generated content and putting together a bunch of unrelated videos to tell one story was so exciting we wanted to move on it," says James O'Reilly, KFC's vice president of national marketing according to News-Leader.com. "Tonight on "American Idol," KFC will air an ad built from snippets of consumers' Web videos. The ad, "Celebration," shows people generally going bonkers, ostensibly for the chain's new menu of chicken with no trans fats. KFC evaluated 400 videos and got approval to use 35 before making the cut to 13," the publication also mentioned.
It's obvious that YouTube is more than a simple online video sharing service because a lot of users are tempted to use it with a different reason. As you can see, YouTube is now an important source for several types of content. In the past, some members turned to YouTube because the online video sharing service was their only hope to survive. Take the example of a woman fighting against leukemia who posted a clip on the page to inform users about the disease and about the treatment. She finally managed to find a matching donor in Denmark, after the clip recorded thousands of views and a lot of comments.
YouTube was also used by a considerable number of police officers because they posted several surveillance clips to require users help, identify and arrest the suspects.