YouTube and NBC learn to play together

It is good to see that parent brand NBC is letting the kids from The Office into the playground with everyone else. Here is a how AdJab describes the partnering of YouTube and NBC:

“The network is now using the community video site to show promos of their shows, and just recently they teamed up for a contest which asks viewers to create a twenty-second promo for The Office."

NBC's very corporate move a while back to remove the posting of Saturday Night Live sketch Lazy Sunday: The Chronicles of Narnia from YouTube is online legend. It did not seem to matter that more people viewed it online versus the original broadcast and that YouTube helped revive buzz around SNL content. NBC got the lawyers involved and *poof* it was gone like Chevy Chase.

So is this partnership a reversal of the earlier short-sighted manoeuvre? Nope, it just looks like NBC figured out how it could benefit NBC. Now they get something back from the online community - promotional spots and a contest to generate content for free. Wouldn’t if be better if NBC did something a little less self serving to remove the stain they left when they pulled Lazy Sunday and other content?

An interesting contest note for The Office submissions: Entrants are not allowed to use actual footage from the show in the promo spots. Here are the rules in case you are interested.

Will the Consumer Generated Content work for NBC? Chevy’s consumer generated content play around Tahoe was quite a boner. So, will The Office follow suit and tank? Probably not. The Office has a legitimate fan base and following that will likely participate (even though NBC’s version pales in comparison to the UK version starring Ricky Gervais).

How about a script mash-up where a character from The Office shows up on The Apprentice and pitches his consumer generated spot for Chevy's Tahoe to The Donald. I'd check that out.