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Crowdsourcing /
  This article appeared in Contagous issue Eighteen.
    Contagous is an intelligence resource for the
       global marketing communiy focusing on
  non-tradiional media and emergng technologes
             www.contagiousmagazine.com

 For more information please contac Harry Gayner on
+44 (0) 20 7575 1822 or harry@contagiousmagazine.com
opinion / crowdsourcing /




Crowdsourcing: Your Recession-Proof Marketing
Strategy? / As marketers come under pressure
to do more wih less, a number of brands are
turning to crowdsourcing to help boos marketing
efeciveness. This might jus be the srategy to lead
your brand out of recession / By Paul Marsden /

        Her        e’s how crowdsourcing works. You take a
         task once performed by employees or contractors,
         and you outsource it online to a distributed crowd of
         experts or enthusiasts through an open-call invitation to
         participate. For example, NASA outsources the task of
         measuring craters on images of Mars to a virtual crowd
         of online astronomy enthusiasts who work for free in
         return for the association with NASA. NASA’s crowd
         of volunteer ‘clickworkers’, as the space agency calls
         them, complete tasks just as accurately as employees
         or contractors, but do so 10 times as fast (because of
         the sheer number of them), and they do it for free.
           The buzzword ‘crowdsourcing’ may be relatively
         new, coined by Wired magazine journalist and author
         Jeff Howe in 2006, but the concept dates back to the
         18th century. In the 1800s, early editions of The Oxford
         English Dictionary were crowdsourced by volunteer
         contributors sending in definitions on paper slips. A
         century earlier, in 1715, the British government ran an
         open contest (the Longitude Prize) to source a decent
         maritime navigation solution, won by a clockmaker
         called John Harrison. More recently, governments and
         industry alike have embraced crowdsourcing through
         open prize contests such as the X-Prize (backed by
         BT) – designed to stimulate innovation, particularly in
         the fields of environment, science and technology.
                                                                     WALKERS CRISPS / DO US A FLAVOUR /
         Crowdsourced marketing
         Firstly, marketers can outsource the promotion of their
                                                                       For example, P&G uses vocalpoint.com, a nationwide
         brands to volunteer brand enthusiasts.
                                                                     virtual crowd of 240,000 female consumers in the US
         Crowdsourcing rocket science is one thing, but can
                                                                     to promote its own and partner brands. The Vocalpoint
         we crowdsource complex tasks, like marketing? Well, if
                                                                     crowd gets to hear about and try new products before
         we take the learning from the world’s biggest marketer,
                                                                     the masses – and if it likes what it sees, it tells others,
         Procter & Gamble, then yes we can. And we can do it
                                                                     if it doesn’t, it tells P&G. It’s a simple mechanism, and
         in three ways.
                                                                     according to Steve Knox, who heads up Vocalpoint,
contagious                             24 / 25




                        LEGO / MINDSTORMS /



a very cost-efficient and effective marketing vehicle –        Winning contestants receive a cash prize of $3,000
recently doubling trial rates across the US, for instance,     (€2,340) upwards for their campaign idea and contest
of a new line of Venus Breeze razors.                          sponsors – ranging from Mercedes Benz to Sony, MTV
                                                               and lastminute.com – get smart campaign ideas fast
  Crowd-powered marketing has given rise to a number
                                                               and cost-effectively with a license to implement.
of rent-a-crowd marketing outfits such as Bzzagent in the
US and UK, TRND in Germany, and Buzzador across                  Eyeka.com is a similar contest site for crowdsourcing
Scandinavia. All use a variation on a simple but effective     advertising content, but with a focus on production.
free-stuff-for-feedback model to drive word of mouth           Eyeka.com offers clients – L’Oreal, Canon, Vodafone,
promotion for brands. Dave Balter, CEO of Bzzagent.            and Vivendi to name but a few – the opportunity to tap
com, is careful to point out that his crowdsourcing            the creative talents of a virtual crowd of 15,000+ semi-
solution only works because it sources and directs             pros from the fields of videography, photography and
honest opinion; his crowd of 500,000+ Bzzagents only           graphic design.
talk positively about products they like. But when they          In a world where brands want to embrace and be seen
do, results are impressive – a recent carefully validated      to embrace participatory media, but are wary of quality
test of the crowd-powered promotion of Philips electric        control and the risk of ‘crowdslapping’ (where the unruly
toothbrushes directly boosted sales by 40,000 units.           crowd bites back and instead of producing promotional
                                                               content subverts it into anti-brand propaganda, as
  The second crowdsourcing opportunity for marketers
                                                               was the case for a 2006 Chevrolet Tahoe campaign)
is to outsource content creation to the crowd.
                                                               carefully managed crowdsourcing contests with gated
                                                               creative communities such as OpenAd and Eyeka
  Rather than pay agencies to create content, brands can
                                                               provide a safe managed solution for harnessing user-
reduce costs and often increase marketing effectiveness
                                                               generated content.
by curating user content. P&G, for example, promotes
its Always and Tampax brands through BeingGirl.com,
                                                                 The third crowdsourcing opportunity for marketers
a discretely branded forum-based Q&A site for teen
                                                               is to outsource innovation ideas and solutions to the
girls, by teen girls. P&G has found BeingGirl to be
                                                               crowd.
four times as effective as comparably priced television
advertising. Hyatt Hotels employs a similar approach to           For example, though InnoCentive.com, P&G taps into
power its Yatt’it site, a virtual concierge for hotel guests    a global crowd of 140,000+ freelance scientists and
comprising tips, ratings and reviews volunteered by             engineers from 170 countries to source solutions to
other guests. Likewise, Honda curates crowd content             R&D conundrums. This time it’s Pop Idol for scientists
to populate its InterNavi GPS system, aggregating              – contestants to find the best solution – and win a
drivers’ ratings, reviews and tips on travel services           prize from $10,000 to $100,000 (€8,000-€80,000).
and destinations. It’s Zagat for the GPS generation.            A solution for getting red wine stains out of shirts?
Similarly, beer brand San Miguel curates rather than            Check. A new solar-powered torch concept? Check.
creates content for its promotional events by handing           Washing up liquid that changes dishwater colour at
over the creative keys to the celebrity DJs and artists         the right concentration? Check. Geek heaven. Through
it invites to run them. Event quality is assured, as is         InnoCentive and other innovation platforms such as Yet2.
attendance because artists leverage their valuable              com and pgconnectdevelop.com, P&G now outsources
social networks.                                                over 50% of its innovation needs to the crowd.
  Some brands are taking the outsourcing of content              Other notable examples of outsourcing innovation
creation a step further and crowdsourcing advertising          solutions include the Goldcorp Challenge and the
content. We’re not talking about promotional stunts here,      Netflix Prize. Goldcorp Mining Company solved the
where the contest rather than the content is the hero (e.g.    vexing problem of where to find gold on its land in Red
the high profile Doritos home-made crashthesuperbowl.          Lake, Ontario by engaging a crowd of 1,400 virtual
com ad campaigns), but genuine attempts to source              gold prospectors in a crowdsourcing contest and
advertising content by outsourcing the creative task           offering $575,000 in prize money for identifying the site
to distributed crowd of experts. For example, OpenAd.          where the most gold would be found. By downloading
net is a platform that allows advertising buyers and           and analyzing 400MB of geological data, contestants
agencies to tap into a distributed network of 12,000+          identified $3bn of gold deposits for Goldcorp. In a similar
creatives from 125 countries. Think of it as Pop Idol for      vein, video rental company Netflix has been running a
creatives – a contest-based crowdsourcing platform             crowdsourcing contest since 2006, offering $1m to
where contestants pitch their best ideas to crack tough        anyone who can come up with a successful solution for
advertising briefs posted by contest-sponsoring brands.        improving by 10% the accuracy of recommendations
opinion / crowdsourcing /




                                                                        MOUNTAIN DEW / DEWMOCRACY /




 IBM / INNOVATION JAM /


         made by its ‘Cinematch’ movie recommendation service.
         As of early 2009, the latest contestants are within a
         whisper of winning the prize, with the leading entry
         improving Cinematch by 9.63%.
           Other brands are running ‘softer’ crowdsourced
         innovation initiatives. For example, Starbucks, Dell, Asus
         (with Intel), Google, and even the White House run
         online open suggestion boards to capture ideas for how
         to improve. Using a familiar Digg.com styled social news
         interface, participants are invited to post and tag their
         own ideas, or vote or comment on others. In principle,          MUJI / DESIGN AWARD /
         the real time voting and tagging allows the best ideas
         to bubble to the top, ready to be implemented. Back-lit
         keyboards, iced coffee made from coffee ice, and open        Getting started with crowdsourcing
         government coming to a town near you. Other brands           Whether you’re crowdsourcing promotional activity,
         have taken more of an online community approach,             content or ideas, here’s a quick set of generally
         either through open communities such as those run by         applicable guidelines for getting started – sourced
         Local Motors, Ecars_now! or Caterham Cars Project            for this article in early 2009 from businesses that
         Splitwheel, or through closed innovation communities         crowdsource (see below for acknowledgements).
         such those run by LEGO, Philips and Intuit. Finally,
                                                                       1 / Start Small: Recruit internal champions and nurture
         a number of brands have opted for an online prize
                                                                      small crowdsourcing experiments first. Crowdsourcing
         contest approach to crowdsourcing new ideas – such
                                                                      veteran and Intuit co-founder Scott Cook suggests
         as Walkers Crisps (Do Us a Flavour) and Mountain
                                                                      seeking organisational buy-in only after you’ve had
         Dew (Dewmocracy).
                                                                      some success. Otherwise, the countercultural jump of
           Whilst cynics dismiss these as marketing stunts,           crowdsourcing may be too big for many brands
         big brands are putting serious money behind them.
                                                                        2 / Remember the 90:9:1 Rule: Temper participation
         IBM, on the back of a global ‘ideajam’ – an online
                                                                      level expectations; only up to 1% of any online community
         brainstorming challenge involving 150,000 participants
                                                                      ever contributes actively to anything. 9% may deign to
         from 104 countries – is funding 10 new businesses
                                                                      vote, rate or comment, whilst the overwhelming 90%
         to the tune of $100m. In Japan, lifestyle brand Muji
                                                                      only ever consume content.
         has launched a number of product innovation ideas
                                                                        3 / Get the Motivational Mix Right: Participation in
         from crowdsourcing design contests – from innovative
                                                                      crowdsourcing is motivated by a number of factors but
         shelving solutions to space-saving beanbag sofas,
                                                                      they boil down to the 4Fs – Fame, Fortune, Fun and
         washing-up powder and portable lamps. Site visitors
                                                                      Fulfilment. Good crowdsourcing initiatives should offer
         get to vote on submitted designs, and can even
                                                                      participants a mix of all four Fs.
         pre-order entries should they win. Only top scoring
                                                                        4 / Deal with Sturgeon’s Law: A complex law to
         entries with a minimum number of pre-orders are put
                                                                      understand, science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon’s
         into production. What’s particularly interesting is that
                                                                      maxim is that ‘90% of everything is crap’ – and it applies
         Muji’s crowdsourced innovations typically outperform
                                                                      to crowdsourcing contributions. So you’ll need a system
         category averages in terms of sales. For example, the
                                                                      in place, like user voting, to filter out the rubbish.
         beanbag sofa generated ¥1.3bn (€11.08m) vs. ¥24m
         (€205,000) for the category average.
contagious                           26 / 27




 5 / Harness Joy’s Law: The counterpoint to Sturgeon’s
Law, ‘No matter who you are, most of the smartest
people work for someone else,’ attributed to Sun
Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy. The key to smart
crowdsourcing is to identify and coalesce expert talent
pools that lie outside your company.
 6 / KISS: Keep it Simple, Stupid: Crowdsourcing
only works when the task is simple for contributors.
Lengthy forms, obtuse IT and arduous tasks are crowd
dispersers. 1-click participation should be your goal.
 7 / Community Rules: Community is the social glue of
crowdsourcing, so allow contributors to connect with
each other, as well as with the sponsoring brand. Where      THREADLESS /
possible, build on existing communities rather than build
new communities, and keep the focus on communities
                                                             but by spotting and commercialising creative work. The
of practice (based on what people do rather than what
                                                             added value the brand offers is the quality assurance
they think (designers, creatives, coaches etc))
                                                             of a curated marketplace linking creative talent to
  8 / Manage the Process: Crowdsourcing initiatives          the market. Sound fanciful? Well three successful
need to be actively managed. Starbucks has a team of         brands are pioneering this vision of Open Marketing
48 specially trained employees who act as discussion         right now; hipster t-shirt brand Threadless, B2B stock
hosts, encouraging participation and feeding back            photography brand iStockphoto, and Apple – through
on ideas. Jeff Bruzzo who heads up Starbuck’s                its game changing software Application Store. All three
crowdsourcing initiative says: ‘These are the people         brands have evolved into effective crowdsourcing
at a dinner party who make sure everyone is having a         platforms that link creative talent with customers,
good time.’                                                  making money by spotting and commercialising the
  9 / Get Legal Involved: Crowdsourcing often involves       work of talented graphic designers, photographers or
the transfer of some kind of an intellectual property,       software designers respectively. So whilst the future of
which is not a problem in itself, but you’ll need a cast     marketing may or may not be crowdsourced, I’ll leave
iron ‘terms and conditions’ clause for contributors          you with a simple recommendation – take a look at
                                                             these three brands and ask yourself: ‘If my brand was
  10 / Promote the Platform: Whether you’re using a
                                                             a platform linking creative talent with customers, what
crowdsourcing community or contest, you’ll need to
                                                             would it do?’ You might just be looking into the future
enthusiastically attract contributors. Promote your
                                                             of your brand.
initiative with online banner advertising, Google ads,
and email campaigns, and even traditional media
advertising and PR
                                                             Paul Marsden is a market researcher, author and
                                                             speaker. He runs clickadvisor.com, a listings site for
Conclusion: crowdsourcing brand futures
                                                             crowdsourcing initiatives.
Taking marketing tasks once performed by employees
                                                             http://delicious.com/contagiousmagazine
or contractors – promotion, content creation and
ideation – and outsourcing them online to distributed
                                                             Thanks to the following experts who participated
crowds of experts or enthusiasts is a radical strategy for
                                                             in a crowdsourcing exercise in January 2009 to
leading brands out of recession. Crowdsourcing has
                                                             generate insights for this article. Dave Balter, CEO,
its problems and critics, but for a number of brands, it
                                                             Bzzagent; Simon Guild, director, Eyeka / ex-CEO
is proving to be an effective solution for doing smarter
                                                             MTV Europe; Jeffrey Kalmikoff, chief creative officer,
marketing faster and more cost-effectively.
                                                             Threadless; Victoria Kartashova, Syzygy; Steve Knox,
  But crowdsourcing is more than just an effective           CEO Vocalpoint; Martin Oetting, head of research,
marketing strategy; it also represents a future-proof        TRND; Mary Ralles, External Relations, P&G Connect
vision for marketing itself – where marketing does its       + Develop; Katarina Skoberne, MD and co-founder
solving-peoples-problems-at-a-profit job by becoming         OpenAd.net; Dwayne Spradlin, CEO, InnoCentive and
an open platform linking creative talent with customers.     Kelly Thompson, COO, iStockphoto. Any errors are
                                                             the exclusively those of the author as are the views
 In this future world of what could be called ‘Open
                                                             presented.
Marketing’ brands make money not by inventing stuff,

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CROWDSOURCING

  • 1. Crowdsourcing / This article appeared in Contagous issue Eighteen. Contagous is an intelligence resource for the global marketing communiy focusing on non-tradiional media and emergng technologes www.contagiousmagazine.com For more information please contac Harry Gayner on +44 (0) 20 7575 1822 or harry@contagiousmagazine.com
  • 2. opinion / crowdsourcing / Crowdsourcing: Your Recession-Proof Marketing Strategy? / As marketers come under pressure to do more wih less, a number of brands are turning to crowdsourcing to help boos marketing efeciveness. This might jus be the srategy to lead your brand out of recession / By Paul Marsden / Her e’s how crowdsourcing works. You take a task once performed by employees or contractors, and you outsource it online to a distributed crowd of experts or enthusiasts through an open-call invitation to participate. For example, NASA outsources the task of measuring craters on images of Mars to a virtual crowd of online astronomy enthusiasts who work for free in return for the association with NASA. NASA’s crowd of volunteer ‘clickworkers’, as the space agency calls them, complete tasks just as accurately as employees or contractors, but do so 10 times as fast (because of the sheer number of them), and they do it for free. The buzzword ‘crowdsourcing’ may be relatively new, coined by Wired magazine journalist and author Jeff Howe in 2006, but the concept dates back to the 18th century. In the 1800s, early editions of The Oxford English Dictionary were crowdsourced by volunteer contributors sending in definitions on paper slips. A century earlier, in 1715, the British government ran an open contest (the Longitude Prize) to source a decent maritime navigation solution, won by a clockmaker called John Harrison. More recently, governments and industry alike have embraced crowdsourcing through open prize contests such as the X-Prize (backed by BT) – designed to stimulate innovation, particularly in the fields of environment, science and technology. WALKERS CRISPS / DO US A FLAVOUR / Crowdsourced marketing Firstly, marketers can outsource the promotion of their For example, P&G uses vocalpoint.com, a nationwide brands to volunteer brand enthusiasts. virtual crowd of 240,000 female consumers in the US Crowdsourcing rocket science is one thing, but can to promote its own and partner brands. The Vocalpoint we crowdsource complex tasks, like marketing? Well, if crowd gets to hear about and try new products before we take the learning from the world’s biggest marketer, the masses – and if it likes what it sees, it tells others, Procter & Gamble, then yes we can. And we can do it if it doesn’t, it tells P&G. It’s a simple mechanism, and in three ways. according to Steve Knox, who heads up Vocalpoint,
  • 3. contagious 24 / 25 LEGO / MINDSTORMS / a very cost-efficient and effective marketing vehicle – Winning contestants receive a cash prize of $3,000 recently doubling trial rates across the US, for instance, (€2,340) upwards for their campaign idea and contest of a new line of Venus Breeze razors. sponsors – ranging from Mercedes Benz to Sony, MTV and lastminute.com – get smart campaign ideas fast Crowd-powered marketing has given rise to a number and cost-effectively with a license to implement. of rent-a-crowd marketing outfits such as Bzzagent in the US and UK, TRND in Germany, and Buzzador across Eyeka.com is a similar contest site for crowdsourcing Scandinavia. All use a variation on a simple but effective advertising content, but with a focus on production. free-stuff-for-feedback model to drive word of mouth Eyeka.com offers clients – L’Oreal, Canon, Vodafone, promotion for brands. Dave Balter, CEO of Bzzagent. and Vivendi to name but a few – the opportunity to tap com, is careful to point out that his crowdsourcing the creative talents of a virtual crowd of 15,000+ semi- solution only works because it sources and directs pros from the fields of videography, photography and honest opinion; his crowd of 500,000+ Bzzagents only graphic design. talk positively about products they like. But when they In a world where brands want to embrace and be seen do, results are impressive – a recent carefully validated to embrace participatory media, but are wary of quality test of the crowd-powered promotion of Philips electric control and the risk of ‘crowdslapping’ (where the unruly toothbrushes directly boosted sales by 40,000 units. crowd bites back and instead of producing promotional content subverts it into anti-brand propaganda, as The second crowdsourcing opportunity for marketers was the case for a 2006 Chevrolet Tahoe campaign) is to outsource content creation to the crowd. carefully managed crowdsourcing contests with gated creative communities such as OpenAd and Eyeka Rather than pay agencies to create content, brands can provide a safe managed solution for harnessing user- reduce costs and often increase marketing effectiveness generated content. by curating user content. P&G, for example, promotes its Always and Tampax brands through BeingGirl.com, The third crowdsourcing opportunity for marketers a discretely branded forum-based Q&A site for teen is to outsource innovation ideas and solutions to the girls, by teen girls. P&G has found BeingGirl to be crowd. four times as effective as comparably priced television advertising. Hyatt Hotels employs a similar approach to For example, though InnoCentive.com, P&G taps into power its Yatt’it site, a virtual concierge for hotel guests a global crowd of 140,000+ freelance scientists and comprising tips, ratings and reviews volunteered by engineers from 170 countries to source solutions to other guests. Likewise, Honda curates crowd content R&D conundrums. This time it’s Pop Idol for scientists to populate its InterNavi GPS system, aggregating – contestants to find the best solution – and win a drivers’ ratings, reviews and tips on travel services prize from $10,000 to $100,000 (€8,000-€80,000). and destinations. It’s Zagat for the GPS generation. A solution for getting red wine stains out of shirts? Similarly, beer brand San Miguel curates rather than Check. A new solar-powered torch concept? Check. creates content for its promotional events by handing Washing up liquid that changes dishwater colour at over the creative keys to the celebrity DJs and artists the right concentration? Check. Geek heaven. Through it invites to run them. Event quality is assured, as is InnoCentive and other innovation platforms such as Yet2. attendance because artists leverage their valuable com and pgconnectdevelop.com, P&G now outsources social networks. over 50% of its innovation needs to the crowd. Some brands are taking the outsourcing of content Other notable examples of outsourcing innovation creation a step further and crowdsourcing advertising solutions include the Goldcorp Challenge and the content. We’re not talking about promotional stunts here, Netflix Prize. Goldcorp Mining Company solved the where the contest rather than the content is the hero (e.g. vexing problem of where to find gold on its land in Red the high profile Doritos home-made crashthesuperbowl. Lake, Ontario by engaging a crowd of 1,400 virtual com ad campaigns), but genuine attempts to source gold prospectors in a crowdsourcing contest and advertising content by outsourcing the creative task offering $575,000 in prize money for identifying the site to distributed crowd of experts. For example, OpenAd. where the most gold would be found. By downloading net is a platform that allows advertising buyers and and analyzing 400MB of geological data, contestants agencies to tap into a distributed network of 12,000+ identified $3bn of gold deposits for Goldcorp. In a similar creatives from 125 countries. Think of it as Pop Idol for vein, video rental company Netflix has been running a creatives – a contest-based crowdsourcing platform crowdsourcing contest since 2006, offering $1m to where contestants pitch their best ideas to crack tough anyone who can come up with a successful solution for advertising briefs posted by contest-sponsoring brands. improving by 10% the accuracy of recommendations
  • 4. opinion / crowdsourcing / MOUNTAIN DEW / DEWMOCRACY / IBM / INNOVATION JAM / made by its ‘Cinematch’ movie recommendation service. As of early 2009, the latest contestants are within a whisper of winning the prize, with the leading entry improving Cinematch by 9.63%. Other brands are running ‘softer’ crowdsourced innovation initiatives. For example, Starbucks, Dell, Asus (with Intel), Google, and even the White House run online open suggestion boards to capture ideas for how to improve. Using a familiar Digg.com styled social news interface, participants are invited to post and tag their own ideas, or vote or comment on others. In principle, MUJI / DESIGN AWARD / the real time voting and tagging allows the best ideas to bubble to the top, ready to be implemented. Back-lit keyboards, iced coffee made from coffee ice, and open Getting started with crowdsourcing government coming to a town near you. Other brands Whether you’re crowdsourcing promotional activity, have taken more of an online community approach, content or ideas, here’s a quick set of generally either through open communities such as those run by applicable guidelines for getting started – sourced Local Motors, Ecars_now! or Caterham Cars Project for this article in early 2009 from businesses that Splitwheel, or through closed innovation communities crowdsource (see below for acknowledgements). such those run by LEGO, Philips and Intuit. Finally, 1 / Start Small: Recruit internal champions and nurture a number of brands have opted for an online prize small crowdsourcing experiments first. Crowdsourcing contest approach to crowdsourcing new ideas – such veteran and Intuit co-founder Scott Cook suggests as Walkers Crisps (Do Us a Flavour) and Mountain seeking organisational buy-in only after you’ve had Dew (Dewmocracy). some success. Otherwise, the countercultural jump of Whilst cynics dismiss these as marketing stunts, crowdsourcing may be too big for many brands big brands are putting serious money behind them. 2 / Remember the 90:9:1 Rule: Temper participation IBM, on the back of a global ‘ideajam’ – an online level expectations; only up to 1% of any online community brainstorming challenge involving 150,000 participants ever contributes actively to anything. 9% may deign to from 104 countries – is funding 10 new businesses vote, rate or comment, whilst the overwhelming 90% to the tune of $100m. In Japan, lifestyle brand Muji only ever consume content. has launched a number of product innovation ideas 3 / Get the Motivational Mix Right: Participation in from crowdsourcing design contests – from innovative crowdsourcing is motivated by a number of factors but shelving solutions to space-saving beanbag sofas, they boil down to the 4Fs – Fame, Fortune, Fun and washing-up powder and portable lamps. Site visitors Fulfilment. Good crowdsourcing initiatives should offer get to vote on submitted designs, and can even participants a mix of all four Fs. pre-order entries should they win. Only top scoring 4 / Deal with Sturgeon’s Law: A complex law to entries with a minimum number of pre-orders are put understand, science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon’s into production. What’s particularly interesting is that maxim is that ‘90% of everything is crap’ – and it applies Muji’s crowdsourced innovations typically outperform to crowdsourcing contributions. So you’ll need a system category averages in terms of sales. For example, the in place, like user voting, to filter out the rubbish. beanbag sofa generated ¥1.3bn (€11.08m) vs. ¥24m (€205,000) for the category average.
  • 5. contagious 26 / 27 5 / Harness Joy’s Law: The counterpoint to Sturgeon’s Law, ‘No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else,’ attributed to Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy. The key to smart crowdsourcing is to identify and coalesce expert talent pools that lie outside your company. 6 / KISS: Keep it Simple, Stupid: Crowdsourcing only works when the task is simple for contributors. Lengthy forms, obtuse IT and arduous tasks are crowd dispersers. 1-click participation should be your goal. 7 / Community Rules: Community is the social glue of crowdsourcing, so allow contributors to connect with each other, as well as with the sponsoring brand. Where THREADLESS / possible, build on existing communities rather than build new communities, and keep the focus on communities but by spotting and commercialising creative work. The of practice (based on what people do rather than what added value the brand offers is the quality assurance they think (designers, creatives, coaches etc)) of a curated marketplace linking creative talent to 8 / Manage the Process: Crowdsourcing initiatives the market. Sound fanciful? Well three successful need to be actively managed. Starbucks has a team of brands are pioneering this vision of Open Marketing 48 specially trained employees who act as discussion right now; hipster t-shirt brand Threadless, B2B stock hosts, encouraging participation and feeding back photography brand iStockphoto, and Apple – through on ideas. Jeff Bruzzo who heads up Starbuck’s its game changing software Application Store. All three crowdsourcing initiative says: ‘These are the people brands have evolved into effective crowdsourcing at a dinner party who make sure everyone is having a platforms that link creative talent with customers, good time.’ making money by spotting and commercialising the 9 / Get Legal Involved: Crowdsourcing often involves work of talented graphic designers, photographers or the transfer of some kind of an intellectual property, software designers respectively. So whilst the future of which is not a problem in itself, but you’ll need a cast marketing may or may not be crowdsourced, I’ll leave iron ‘terms and conditions’ clause for contributors you with a simple recommendation – take a look at these three brands and ask yourself: ‘If my brand was 10 / Promote the Platform: Whether you’re using a a platform linking creative talent with customers, what crowdsourcing community or contest, you’ll need to would it do?’ You might just be looking into the future enthusiastically attract contributors. Promote your of your brand. initiative with online banner advertising, Google ads, and email campaigns, and even traditional media advertising and PR Paul Marsden is a market researcher, author and speaker. He runs clickadvisor.com, a listings site for Conclusion: crowdsourcing brand futures crowdsourcing initiatives. Taking marketing tasks once performed by employees http://delicious.com/contagiousmagazine or contractors – promotion, content creation and ideation – and outsourcing them online to distributed Thanks to the following experts who participated crowds of experts or enthusiasts is a radical strategy for in a crowdsourcing exercise in January 2009 to leading brands out of recession. Crowdsourcing has generate insights for this article. Dave Balter, CEO, its problems and critics, but for a number of brands, it Bzzagent; Simon Guild, director, Eyeka / ex-CEO is proving to be an effective solution for doing smarter MTV Europe; Jeffrey Kalmikoff, chief creative officer, marketing faster and more cost-effectively. Threadless; Victoria Kartashova, Syzygy; Steve Knox, But crowdsourcing is more than just an effective CEO Vocalpoint; Martin Oetting, head of research, marketing strategy; it also represents a future-proof TRND; Mary Ralles, External Relations, P&G Connect vision for marketing itself – where marketing does its + Develop; Katarina Skoberne, MD and co-founder solving-peoples-problems-at-a-profit job by becoming OpenAd.net; Dwayne Spradlin, CEO, InnoCentive and an open platform linking creative talent with customers. Kelly Thompson, COO, iStockphoto. Any errors are the exclusively those of the author as are the views In this future world of what could be called ‘Open presented. Marketing’ brands make money not by inventing stuff,