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Agencies: Karmarama, Naked, Lunch, Art Science

±±¾©Èü³µpk10: Do something

Verdict: 3 out of 5

No strategic recommendation for a youth-focused brand is complete without a reference to user-generated content. Forget trying to produce compelling advertising; simply get your audience to create the content themselves. And by encouraging them to share it with their peers, you can even save the cost of buying the media.

The Kickers team has jumped on the bandwagon, calling on "sunshine teens" (the in-vogue label for youth) to "do something". The campaign attempts to evoke the rebellious spirit of Paris in '68, when students manned the barricades, apparently wearing Kickers. It would be interesting to know how many 16-year-olds know what happened there almost 40 years ago.

The usual mix of conventional outdoor and ambient is designed to encourage young people seeking to "start their own creative revolution" to see www.godosomething.co.uk. Unfortunately, the suggestions featured on the website reminded me of the "Why don't you?" children's TV series of the 1970s and '80s - not really cutting edge youth content.

You have to question whether the Kickers brand is strong enough to carry this type of campaign on its own. The standard for user-generated content has been set extremely high by the likes of YouTube and MySpace, and only the Nikes and Apples of this world have the brand strength and creative credentials to compete. Kickers may have been better advised to collaborate with media partners with stronger creative credentials.

The smart element of the campaign is the repurposing of the web content as a printed fanzine distributed in Kickers' stores. Although the youth target spends lots of time online, they still like to get their hands on paper sometimes, and it was good to see how a web idea can be made to work at store level. - Review by Martin Thomas, head of strategy, Media Planning Group.