Nikon snaps up users' photos 4 Oct 2006

Pure-plays like Amazon, eBay and Yahoo! have built wildy-successful companies on the back of customer-generated content, yet the rest of the business world has largely shunned this approach. Until now, that is. Lately it's seemed that almost every article published in the IT press has been about a large company inviting users to contribute content. Joseph Jaffe describes Nikon's attempt to get in on the action on his Jaffe Juice blog.

Jaffe reports that Nikon sent its new D80 camera to a group of Flickr enthusiasts. The photos they took were then used by the company to form the backbone of its latest advertising campaign. Says Jaffe: "Nikon did what every major brand should be doing...it got out of its own way and let the real people that counted do the talking: their own consumers".

[via Kottke]