George Masters’ iPod mini ad has marketing world entranced

Turns out the homemade iPod mini ad we posted last week is causing quite a stir in the marketing world. Experts say it has 'gone viral' which means that actual people are spreading the news to each other instead of absorbing it from major media. Some say this consumer evangelism will be the future of advertising:

"The ad has caught the attention of marketers, who praise its professional production values and say it's one of the
first "pure" advertisements seen on the internet. Though homemade ads are nothing new, most are parodies, protests or
political commentaries. Bruce Rubel, a vice president at New York PR agency CooperKatz and author of the Micro
Persuasion web log, said evangelistic customers like Masters will increasingly play a role in marketing. 'It's a sign
that consumers want to have a role in promoting a product they love,' he said. 'There's a real trend toward
consumer-generated media. People are creating news, they're blogging. People will create marketing as well. This guy
is a great example.'"

— Leander Kahney, Wired News

I think it's less that consumers want to be marketers, and more that consumers don't want to be consumers. Or rather, we don't want to be *mere* consumers, passively absorbing whatever is dished out by capitalist machinery.
People are creative by nature; give us a platform for self-expression and we'll go to town – hence blogging merrily takes off of its own accord, leaving major media scratching its head.

I'm sure there are folks out there who really enjoy selling things. I'm not one of them, and I doubt that George Masters is, either. He's not marketing the iPod mini so much as he's sharing the love. If it turns out that this genuine human urge to share may end up trumping some multi-million dollar advertising schemes, I won't be terribly surprised.