Public pitching makes you go vom

Sydney Morning Herald: A cocktail of web technologies, a top creative team, willing consumers and, hey presto, an Australian business idea is now heading to the United States.
Supervirals.com is a website where the public can submit advertising suggestions to established brands and in the process receive financial rewards and moral kudos.
It is an adman's way of creating user-generated content for the benefit of advertisers, albeit with little investment from them.

Another charming way for advertisers to exploit people
I remember seeing this and thinking how sad and terrible for the public. Most people sit by and don't care, but then there are the run-of-the-mill creative wannabees who have been blocked by ad agencies for years and they take a stab at doing it for free.
The advertisers put the consumer through the ringer, without compensation and the ad agencies, who are still on retainer, sit by and do nothing.
The content comes out and advertisers think, why in the hell do we need an ad agency? And in the meantime the sales for the product in question haven't wavered and are probably about equal to where they were before the advertiser exploited the public.

It did use to be that the advertiser had power. But no longer. Advertisers can't keep thinking they can do this shit just because multimedia creative technology is now in the hands of the masses. I suggest if advertisers want to go ahead and do this rubbish, they consider what they're doing- do unto others as you would have them do unto you!