I’ve responded numerous times to the accusation/belief that crowdsourcing is somehow bastardizing creativity and putting professional creatives out of work so I wanted to share my thoughts in this blog post. First we have to acknowledge and understand there are many different types of crowdsourcing, so many that the term is being taxed and we might need to add to the nomenclature—maybe we can crowdsource a new name!  For the sake of this post, I’m referring to the form of crowdsourcing that’s used to activate and engage a community.

I come from an agency background and have worked with some of the top creative talent in the world, in fact most of my dearest friends are creatives. As you can imagine I wouldn’t want to see jobs or opportunities taken from my friends. Let me explain how the brand of crowdsourcing I endorse, and that my company CrowdTogether supports, differs from the types of crowdsourcing that may cause some of the negative effects—these being a loss of opportunities that result in income.

First, if you don’t know much about advertising and marketing, you probably can’t appreciate the sheer number of creative resources and tasks it takes to launch a campaign. You need designers and copy writers to birth the campaign, then you have to create a visual identity, then you need designers to create the mountain of assets required for the brand’s digital presence, there are website images, banner ads, rich media banner ads, print ads, product brochures, packaging, you have copy writers and user experience designers, flash developers, programmers etc…you get the point.  There’s a lot of work that needs to be done, and most of this work requires highly skilled professionals who are part of a cohesive team working towards a common goal.

There’s a growing interest in using crowdsourcing as a social marketing tool to activate and engage a community of fans, giving them the ability to connect with their favorite bands, brands, events, causes, groups, etc. Lets use a photo contest as an example. Timbuk2, the bag manufacture from San Francisco, invited their community to submit photos of their pets in their Timbuk2 bag.  No creatives were harmed in the execution of this crowdsourcing marketing campaign. Let’s look at a design contest that recently ran on CrowdTogether’s platform for the Summer Camp Music Festival. They invited fans to submit and vote on the design of an official piece of merchandise, a bandana. I know not one creative working for the festival that lost their job because of this campaign—they still needed creative folks to design the 50 other merchandise items they sold at the event. They still needed folks to create their newsletters, logos, website updates, online ads, etc… Yet the community was delighted and excited they were given the opportunity to design and vote on one simple little item.

The point is, it’s easy to go on about how crowdsourcing is taking jobs away from creatives, but the reality is there’s plenty of work to go around for the pros and plenty of other tasks for fans. Consumers want to be involved it’s undeniable. Alvin Toffler wrote in his book the Third Wave “People don’t want to consume passively; they’d rather participate in the development and creation of products meaningful to them.” Consumers want to “participate” in, not take over the creation of products.  Can’t we throw them a bone? I hope this helps to put the whole thing in perspective and so you can see how crowdsourcing and professional creatives can co-exist peacefully.

Are you familiar with crowdsourcing? Do you know what the benefits are?

Social media has changed the way businesses engage with consumers—fans and followers don’t want to be told, they want to discover. It’s no longer a one-way (or even a two-way) conversation.

It’s now a multiplayer experience that relies on collective, thoughtful engagement.

Consumers have the tools, time and desire to be involved on a much deeper level than we’ve ever seen before. There are several distinct ways that you can take these ideas and build social media campaigns that use existing tools and technologies to achieve powerful results.

Today, brands big and small are homing in on the tactic of crowdsourcing, defined as the act of outsourcing tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor to an undefined, large group of people or community (a “crowd”), through an open call. Hidden within this utilitarian definition are powerful cultural drivers that can be catalyzed to achieve powerful social engagement and activation.

What’s the benefit of crowdsourcing?

As the evolving relationship between consumers and brands brings everyone closer together, interactions and relations will continue to become more and more complimentary each time, giving and taking equally and fairly. You can turn consumers into brand advocates by getting them involved and engaged.

It’s at the intersection of these ideas where a powerful and new way to socially activate and engage consumers exists. It’s time to get your consumers talking—so connect with your crowd when you’re using social media.

Alex Bogusky and John Winsor wrote in their book Baked In about organizational intelligence, saying, “The intelligence of the whole can differ wildly based on who is connected and to whom and how.” By extension, we can say that if a company is disconnected from its consumers, the organizational IQ suffers.

Open up your social media sites to the input and feedback of your “crowd.” Image source: http://www.istockphoto.com/

Below are three principles of crowdsourcing that can be used on or in tandem with social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs.

#1: Ask for feedback (then do something with it)

Your business might say, “We listen to our customers, and your feedback is always welcome.” Well, that’s great, and listening is the first step, but without follow-up action, you’ll leave your customers feeling short-changed. The gap between satisfied and disappointed is easily closed, yet it’s often left wide open. This is a wasted opportunity.

Asking open-ended questions on your social media sites is a way to not only close the gap, but also create a program that turns the act of collecting and reacting to feedback into a marketing campaign of activation and engagement.

Biore Skincare asks their consumers questions to facilitate a conversation.

For example, ask fans when or why they first had a need for your product or service. You’ve not only connected with your online audience, but also gained valuable insight into the thought process of your constituents.

Starbucks executed this idea of using consumer feedback with “My Starbucks Idea.”

Starbucks fans can share, vote, discuss and see ideas on My Starbucks Idea.

The site allows users to submit suggestions to be voted on by Starbucks’ consumers, and the most popular suggestions are highlighted and reviewed. Starbucks then took it a step further and added an “Ideas in Action” blog that gives updates to users on the status of changes suggested.

#2: Create contests and giveaways

People love winning, and when they win prizes or discounts, they’ll share the news with their friends. Consider implementing trivia promotions and offering reduced-price or free products or services as prizes to fans who identify the correct answer first. Using a contest application can give you everything you need to implement and manage a campaign.

One thing you want to be sure of is your ability to capture contact information for participants. Getting users’ contact information allows you to plan for a post-event promotion. You’ll know the participants have your brand top of mind at the end of your event, so having a special promotion ready to offer immediately following the event while you have the attention of the participants is critical.

You also want to be sure the platform you choose has all the social media sharing tools built in so participants can use Facebook and Twitter to let their social networks know about the contest. After all, turning participants into promoters is one of the main reasons to run a crowdsourcing campaign in the first place.

For example, create contests with a seasonal twist to get people talking, like a costume photo contest for your consumers and fans during Halloween. A brand that executed this concept is Graco baby products. They implemented a Halloween Costume Contest in 2010 on the brand’s Flickr page and gave away a sound machine to the winner as an incentive for fans to participate.

Here’s a promotion where people sent their child’s cutest Halloween photo.

Another great big-brand example of crowdsourcing with social media is Dunkin Donuts. DD created the “Create Dunkin’s Next Donut” contest in 2010. The contest was a huge success, generating more than 130,000 donut submissions and 174,000 votes.

Dunkin Donuts asked fans to design the next donut.

#3: Poll or survey your fans

Consumers love to give their opinion. They want to share their ideas, feelings and opinions in a quick, easy way that makes them feel like they’re connecting with a brand. You can poll fans on anything; it makes them feel like their ideas, thoughts and feedback are appreciated.

Facebook Questions lets you submit an open-ended question and create custom multiple-choice polls.

For example, if you’re a restaurant owner, consider polling fans on what seasonal dish they would like to see for the upcoming summer season. Polling or surveying fans and followers is the fastest way to structure an active conversation on a topic that you encourage.

Whether you’re collecting user feedback, running crowdsourcing contests or polling your audience, you’ll benefit greatly from making these types of campaigns recurring fixtures in your business’s social media strategy.

While participation may not be where you’d like it for the first attempt, by repeating the programs on a regular basis, you’ll condition your community to anticipate what’s coming next and this will cause a steady increase in participation. So don’t give up in the beginning. Trust that you have a clear understanding of the behaviors you’re trying to solicit and that your community is eager to participate.

What makes a professional a professional—holding a position and being paid for work performed?  And what does it mean to get paid? You may think the answer is simple—getting a paycheck of course.  How about an amateur—what makes one an amateur? Doing something for free and not getting paid? What if all this was flipped on its head? When it comes to using crowdsourcing as a marketing tool, it’s arguable that amateur creative contributions facilitate engagement and provide a fresh perspective.

Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile conducted a study on the impact that compensation has on creativity. A group of professional artists produced both commissioned (paid) and non-commissioned (unpaid) work—the resulting art was judged by a panel of art critics who had no knowledge of the study.  The research team said “The commissioned works were rated as significantly less creative than the non-commissioned works, yet they were not rated as different in technical quality.  Moreover, the artists reported feeling significantly more constrained when doing commissioned work than when doing non-commissioned work” 

What these and other recent studies conclude is that not only are people willing to preform tasks without compensation, but the quality of the output is often superior to those who are paid to do the task. With this knowledge marketers can build campaigns that take advantage of these findings achieving activation and engagement of consumers.  The formula to do this is actually quite simple; first you must identify a passionate group of like-minded individuals.  Remember it’s intrinsic motivation that’s going to yield the results we’re after. Once the community is identified you’ll need to find a creative task for them to perform.  The task can be as simple as designing a t-shirt or poster. With these basic elements you can achieve surprising results when the joy of the task becomes the reward.  Consumer participation is here to stay and it’s now up to brands to find meaningful ways to get them involved.

A great example of a campaign that elegantly combines all the pieces mentioned above is Mountain Dew’s Green Label Art campaign. 35 skate shops across the country were invited to design a can. Mountain Dew then asked their fans to vote and decide which can to distribute in stores nationwide.  Mountain Dew executed this campaign to perfection by understanding which of its fans have the passion and creative skills to design the can and then asking the community to vote for their favorite. 

There are a billion connected people in this world with varying degrees of motivations and desires.  Clearly there’s no shortage of amateur resources, no shortage of desire and no shortage of creative tools.  The challenge is building campaigns that combine all these pieces to achieve meaningful results.  Fortunately the tools to activate and engage consumers around a creative task are now available and they’re free.  Take a good look at your consumers and fans then find ways to get them involved at a deeper level; not only will they jump at the chance they wont expect a paycheck. 

Marketing and PR continues to become more complex as there are more and more accessible methods for consumers interact with brands and with each other.  Making sense of all the possibilities is a daunting task. Everyone is familiar with the basics like Facebook and Twitter—but what else is there?  While Facebook and Twitter are regarded as engagement tools, the clutter of many-to-many conversations does diminish a campaign’s impact and effectiveness.  This is precisely where crowdsourcing can fit in as a way to cut through the noise and build meaningful connections with your consumers or community.

Crowdsourcing, or co-creation, is a fun and engaging marketing and PR tool to get a community of participants activated and engaged leading up to an event or as part of a campaign. Building a campaign around crowdsourcing can be a quick and easy way to mix things up and get people talking with little or no cost.

There are some basics we must understand that will help to ensure a successful crowdsourcing campaign. First, you have to know what motivates your community—are they passionate about your charity’s cause, are they passionate about your product or service, what gets them fired up?  American Idol, the all-time greatest crowdsourcing event ever, knows it’s audience is passionate about talented homegrown singers. Lance Armstrong’s LIVESTRONG foundation knows its supporters are passionate about cancer research and cycling.

Once you know your audience’s passion it’s on to the next step—finding a task the community with tackle enthusiastically.  This isn’t about assigning them work, but instead about finding a purposeful task that will have a meaningful impact.

So you’ve identified what motivates your community and you’ve come up with a task for them—now what? Today there are free tools available from companies like CrowdTogether that can be used to quickly and easily set up a crowdsourcing event for your group.  Using a platform like CrowdTogether takes care of the complexities of building an event page, figuring out how to collect and display submissions and how to tally votes.

Now it’s time for Facebook and Twitter to do their job—getting the word out.  Along with a nicely formatted HTML email invitation and promotional content on your website, Facebook and Twitter are ideal for getting people talking about your event.  Each user who comments on your Facebook page or about your event increases your ability to reach people exponentially—that’s the beauty of social networking tools.  There’s power in passion, and there’s passion in your community, so start thinking about ways to tap into this abundant resource.  With a billion people online, and the pervasiveness of desktop publishing software, nearly everyone is a potential contributor.  So don’t discount people’s desire to be heard, everyone wants to have a voice, it’s up to you to find their passion and give them a purposeful assignment, your community will do the rest.

PR professionals have entered a new era. They now manage complex two-way relationships where individuals exist both as a community member and contributor simultaneously. Those who understand the power that lies within communities, embrace members’ duality, and find smart ways to give people the voice and influence they desire will drive powerful results.

Crowdsourcing as a PR tool is a fun way to get a community of participants activated and engaged as a lead-up to an event or as part of a campaign. Alvin Toffler, author of The Third Wave wrote: “People don’t want to consume passively; they’d rather participate in the development and creation of products meaningful to them.” This prophetic viewpoint is looking increasingly true for organizations that want to engage their constituents.

Take Toyota’s Sponsafier campaign, for example. They’ve invited their NASCAR fans to design a car—not as engineers or mechanics, but as graphic designers. Fans can design a car on the Sponsafier website, share it with friends online, and if it gets enough votes, their design will be produced and featured at the NASCAR Sprint Cup All-Star Race.

Toyota, a Japanese manufacturer in a sport dominated by American car companies, was looking for a way to better connect with NASCAR fans. The Sponsafier campaign’s effectiveness was in its ability to make connections by engaging fans at a deeper level resulting in a genuine feeling of ownership and participation. The Sponsafier campaign was a masterful example of the power of crowdsourcing.

Clearly, when brands employ crowdsourcing to engage their community, the benefits are symbiotic. By giving up some control and handing it over to the consumer, brands are able to turn participation into strong connections.  In this exchange consumers gain creative influence over something that’s meaningful to them. However, to maximize the success of this new relationship it’s critical to understand what will motivate someone to participate and what barriers to entry exist for them to be involved.

Fortunately, today co-creation is not limited to big brands with big marketing budgets. Community and group organizers have access to free, easy-to-use tools that allow them to use crowdsourcing to involve their members.  In the future, you can expect to see things like charity events, where nonprofits will invite participants to design and vote for their fundraiser’s t-shirt; bands that will engage fans in the creative process by asking them to design and vote for concert posters or album covers; and micro breweries that will invite consumers to design and vote on bottle labels. Communities will also host photo contests, audio contests, video contests—the opportunities to co-create are endless.

In the next five years brands from various industries like automobile manufacturing and apparel companies will continue to develop and expand ways for consumers to participate in the creation of products. Crowdsourcing is going to expand beyond big ideas and big brands into smaller, everyday groups that we all belong to; think youth groups, intramural teams, or local bands.

This doesn’t mean every initiative or decision will be crowdsourced, but given the billion connected people in the world, and the advances in technology that allow us to create and share ideas so quickly, it would be foolish to overlook everyday folks as a resource.