Context is crucial. When I take the following text from a Business Week article, for instance, it sounds as if marketers want to save money by having customers make their ads. Since, that’s insanity, it must be something else. I must be taking it out of context.
In a time when consumers can scrub advertising from their laptops and distribute ad-free amateur radio shows online, marketers are giving away some control over their ads. Their hope is that the public will accept them as entertainment rather than advertising. The most successful have found it a way to spark buzz and get creative ads on the cheap.
The BW piece fails to make this point. Customer involved marketing is positive, but it’s not a replacement for anything, it’s one more tactic