Because, What's Better Than Free Advertising?

I read an article over the weekend about the New Jersey Devils. Now, I'm no huge hockey fan, but I was reading the article for its bigger-picture content: the Devils are getting free advertising through social media sites. The article states that in February, the Devils' owner, Jeff Vanderbeek, started an organization called the Devils Army. The Army is made up of Devils fanatics that browse the internet for Devils related information and, once found, post it to social networking sites including Twitter and Facebook. Get this: the fans work for free.

Though the Devils Army generals aren't getting paid, the trade-off does work both ways. The Devils get free promotion and advertising through mediums and messages that already exist encompassed to one source for the fan. Through working at Mission Control, fans feel as if they are a part of the organization, which they should. At mission control, generals have much technology at their fingertips, including large flat-screen monitors set to sports shows and high-speed computers on which to do their information-tracking.

I think this is a great idea, for sports organizations at least. It isn't killing any jobs; it's just using resources that already exist. It is also helping increase fan hype - before Vanderbeek came up with the idea, attendance for New Jersey Devils home games was hovering around 80 percent, a dangerous 16 percent lower than most other hockey organizations' attendance levels. Now, that number is steadily growing.

Are we going to see a trend in consumer-led advertising? Is social media slowly taking the place of paid advertising in general? Only time will tell, but I predict this isn't the last we'll see of the consumer in the advertising market.