With the rise of alternative marketing, including user and consumer generated ad content, there have also come questions of appropriateness. There is no central clearing house for ideas, in the viral marketing world. There is no one point of view through which everything is filtered. This can create problems for companies who put up advertising that might be deemed offensive.

You may have heard about the controversy involving Volkswagen. It started in January when a British newspaper reported that Volkswagen paid two design professionals to create a professional-quality car commercial that was making the rounds online, in viral fashion.

The ad portrays a suicide bomber attempting to blow up a cafe by detonating a bomb from inside his VW Polo. However, the car contains the explosion, prompting the tag line, "Polo. Small but tough." The ads creators claim that ad was never intended for public consumption, and Volkswagen has vehemently denied having anything to do with the clever but controversial ad (to the point where it's now suing the creators).

Still, many believe the company was secretly involved. The debate has been a regular feature on marketing blogs since the ad's release and is responsible for a widespread viral marketing campaign. The video has been uploaded to numerous video-sharing sites, and has been posted on internet message forums and chat rooms all over the internet.

This debate touches on a facet of content created without accountability, namely the fact that without accountability, many more of our politically correct sensibilities are liable to be violated. The Volkswagen video touches on some of the more volatile flashpoints in our culture today: violence, terrorism, and political discourse in advertising.

Terrorism is a large issue for us today. We are currently engaged in a war against it. We struggle with the idea of suicide bombers. Most people cannot understand how and why someone would choose to kill themselves by killing as many other people as they can. It is an act, and an ideology, that makes us uncomfortable. This kind of discomfort is not a traditional tack to take in advertising. Traditional advertising is based upon making people comfortable, making them happy, selling them a life that is better than the one they live.

Political discourse in advertising is equally controversial, for different reasons. It does not make us uncomfortable in the same way, but it does represent a tension. In an age in which people are increasingly jaded to politics and believe, by and large, that all politics is bought and paid for, blurring the line further by incorporating political statements into advertising enters a gray zone that bridges advertising and news.

Political advertisements are already the subject of controversy, and they are explicit statements, with the intent to sway political thought. Incorporating elements of current political debate into advertisements meant to sell a particular product further blurs the line between political statement and money. That line is already far too blurry for some.

T-Mobile was also propelled into the spotlight by an equally controversial incident. In late February, socialite Paris Hilton publicly announced her T-Mobile Sidekick had been hacked. Subsequently, her famous friends' contact information was posted on the Web. Although one might assume security concerns would spell doom for the wireless carrier, the incident actually boosted Sidekick sales. This prompted a few fellow marketers to jokingly question whether the hack was, in fact, an accident.

This may seem like a stretch, the province of crazy conspiracy theorists, but the boost in Sidekick sales is unmistakable. Perhaps it is not so far fetched that the company orchestrated the incident to raise the Sidekick’s profile in the public consciousness.

VW and T-Mobile may not be behind the Internet scandals that brought them so much press, but these incidents got me thinking: is alternative marketing poised to become the principal arrow in a media planner's quiver?

After all, the old adage is that any press is good press. Perhaps these new marketing techniques are merely proving that in spectacular fashion. With the ability and the freedom to take the kind of risk that would create this kind of controversy, we are perhaps seeing the ultimate proof that anything that gets your company or product’s name out there is not a bad thing, but instead a good thing.

User-generated content means that content is created from a myriad of different perspectives, both personal and cultural. People from a variety of viewpoints, with a variety of life experience may, perhaps, use or be interested in the same product. This means that advertising for this product can now speak to all of those diverse and disparate groups, in their voice and in a language they understand and appreciate.

Fresh ideas are easier to attain, and cheaper to produce in this user-generated content model. Because the majority of the content of advertising is created free of charge by the consumers of said product, and the company doesn't have to make expensive ad buys on television, the cost of advertising is reduced dramatically. The only major outlay that the company makes is the web space and hosting to get the consumer-generated content out there. Some companies (such as Converse) also offer a cash prize to the “best” ad created by consumers as an incentive to lure them into involvement. Money is a great human motivator.

Still, this is a much cheaper alternative to the traditional television marketing campaign, involving paying for creative, actors, directors, design, and the air time to get the ad out to people. In traditional advertising, all of these costs are borne by the company. In alternative marketing schemes, the majority of these costs are outlaid to the consumers of the product. It’s a clever switch.

However, the trade off is always that out-sourcing creative processes inherently carries a loss of control of the output of those creative processes. You don't get to control what is made that carries ties to your product, either official or unofficial. Of course, a company can always refuse to put a piece of user-generated content on it’s official website, but that doesn't always stop it’s dissemination. The beauty and the curse of the internet is that it is free and open for all to use, and free upload sites such as YouTube and Flickr make it possible for anyone to make their work available to the general population. If the ad is creative and clever, as was the case with the disputed Volkswagen ad, it just may become an internet sensation.