Of the three players involved in CGA, the corporate brass have the most to gain by ensuring CGA sticks as an advertising format. A CGA campaign has the potential to produce ads that are as good or better than those of an advertising agency, and provides the additional benefits of press and consumer buzz, and cost effectiveness.

Thus marketers would like to see CGA have prolonged success and end up on the “high” road. In this scenario, CGA would become indoctrinated as a cog in every advertising planner’s arsenal. Planners would no longer question whether or not to engage in CGA, but how much of the company’s resources and budget should be delegated to it. CGA would be added as a separate entity on the list of advertising expenditures (e.g., “network TV”, “online,” “outdoors” etc.), and would increasingly win share from the other categories

But it is the consumer that ultimately controls the fate of CGA. So far consumers have shown a surprising willingness to put their time and creative talents into producing ads for the brands they adore. This paper has identified three key motivations of consumers who contribute to CGA: passion for the brand, an interest in interacting with new media technologies, and an interest in breaking in to the movie-making or advertising industry. Five years from now, there will likely be just as many aspiring film makers and advertising creatives. But in order for CGA campaigns to thrive, they need more than the contributions of these “stars.” They also need bulk contributions from the more artistically and technologically-average public – the ones that are motivated by their passion for their brand or their interest in new technologies.

What if five years from now the average person doesn’t find the idea of, say, creating a video with a digital camcorder (or cell phone?) and posting it on the Internet so novel? If these consumers cool off to the idea of participating in CGA and the average number of contributions per campaign will drop and the campaigns will generate less buzz, less website traffic, and thus will be generally less effective. This in turn would cause marketing executives to cool off towards CGA as well, and eventually lead to the demise of CGA as a viable marketing option.

This scenario represents the “low” road for CGA. If it were to materialize, the corporate marketers, advertising agency executives, academics and industry pundits that currently engage in heated debates over the future of CGA will in the end quietly acquiesce that it was just a passing trend in the long history of advertising. CGA will be a hot topic only among stand-up comedians who use it as material in their “what were we thinking?” routines.

However, since CGA participants are motivated not only by the novelty of new technology but by their passion for the brand, I don’t believe that CGA could fade from existence as in the scenario above. Even if the novelty of the format and the media tools used in creating it should fade, I still foresee CGA remaining a viable option for the Converse's and iPods of the world – the brands that have “brand communities” made up of loyal and passionate fans. Marketers will realize that CGA is indeed a very effective format, but this effectiveness is largely dependent on how much of a connection the brand has with its costumers in the first place. In taking this “middle” road, CGA will end up playing a similar or slightly more visible role in advertising than it does today.