Interesting commentary over on Ad Age titled “How to Thrive in New World of User-Created Content: Let Go” (Link). I’d agree with everything except this line:

The ads aren’t just harmless, they’re beneficial.

Wrong. I believe they hurt. Not short term, but relatively long term. Because in between “(a)nyone in the market for oversize vehicles” and the “(t)ruck critics [who] didn’t have the Tahoe on their consideration list to begin with” are those who can be swayed. And those damning ads are so well-stated and so compelling (and gas prices are so high and global warming such a frequent topic in the MSM), that anyone on the fence about whether or not to purchase one of those vehicles in the near future is being pushed off in the wrong direction (from the manufacturer’s point of view). To blithely say that those ads didn’t hurt is to also say that ads in general don’t really help. I doubt author Scott Donaton really believes that.