Market saturation and market fragmentation became a serious issue for advertisers starting in the early 1990's, if not before then. Brands were forced into developing new ways to connect with consumers and market themselves effectively. One of the most significant strategies to emerge during this time was “relationship marketing.” “The One-to-One Future,” co-authored by Martha Rogers in 1993, is largely considered the defining publication of the movement (Leckenby, 2007).

One of the central tenets of relationship marketing is that media should not be used as a one-way communication tool where brands advertise their messages and consumers either listen or don't listen. Rather, media should be utilized as a bi-directional tool that enables consumers to take part in the brand's development by sharing information and providing feedback. When consumers feel engaged in a “relationship” with the brand, Rogers theorized, they will be less aversive toward advertising messages. The brands, on the other hand, benefit from an increased understanding of how consumers use and feel about their products. (Leckenby, 2007)

In 1998, the relationship marketing movement was declared “dead” by Susan Fornier in the Harvard Business Review. Fournier felt that brands could not realistically maintain “one-on-one” relationships with their consumers, because (a) doing so would stretch company resources too thin or (b) consumers don't have the capacity to, or are simply not interested in, maintaining relationships with all the brands they purchase. (Leckenby, 2007)

A decade later, however, relationship marketing is alive and well – and nowhere is this more apparent than in the surge in CGA campaigns. CGA, in fact, can be viewed as the very embodiment of relationship marketing. First of all, CGA campaigns are commonly cited by marketing executives as a way to combat market saturation and fragmentation – the very same factors that gave birth to the relationship-marketing paradigm. The core tenet of relationship marketing, moreover, calls for “collaboration” between the brand and consumer in building the brand -- what could be more collaborative than involving consumers in the ad-creation process?

The relationship-marketing bible

Interestingly, another core tenet of Rogers' relationship marketing is that the media used to collaborate with the consumer should be inexpensive (Leckenby, 2007). Marketing executives hail the inexpensiveness of CGA campaigns, relative to those run by traditional ad agencies, as one of the CGA format's most appealing qualities.

Why did a take a whole decade for Rogers' relationship-marketing paradigm to become realized in the form of CGA? An obvious answer lies in the increasing availability and usage of the Internet. When Rogers published her book in 1993, there were only one million Internet users worldwide (Greenspan, 2003). As of January 2007, there are over 200 million Internet users in the US alone (a market penetration of 69.4%) (internetstats.com). The proliferation of the Internet finally enabled marketers to interact with consumers on the level that Rogers had imagined when she created the relationship marketing paradigm. Website registration cards, chat rooms and CGA make it easier for brands to find out about their consumers than via mail surveys, phone surveys or other traditional marketing-research methods that today's consumer see as intrusive and/or too time-consuming. One study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that more than a third of all Internet users have posted something on the Web – proof of consumers' willingness to be active participants when online (Rose, 2006).

The market saturation and fragmentation that occurred in the early 1990's necessitated a change in the way marketers connected with consumers. The proliferation of the Internet and other media formats that occurred in the following decades enabled greater two-way communication between consumers and brands. Only the future will tell if the emergence of CGA represents the peak of “two-way,” “one-to-one” or “relationship” marketing, or if it merely represents a starting point.

Now that we better understand how the CGA format emerged, let's examine CGA in its present form by looking at two recent campaigns in greater detail, Converse and Chevy Tahoe.