Crowdsourcing - genius from the masses

Crowdsourcing. The term is cropping up all over the place, but is it just a short-lived ‘buzz’ phrase or is it a genuinely useful business tool?

In a world where it is increasingly difficult to achieve cut-through – both from a marketing perspective and a product differentiation point of view, anything (within reason of course) which can set you apart from the crowd is a good thing. So how can crowdsourcing help?

Firstly, what is crowdsourcing?

Brought into the spotlight by Dell’s innovative use of the concept, crowdsourcing is a technique that empowers your audiences to help solve your business challenges, innovate in product development, evolve the business to meet consumer needs and much more. It draws upon the input of the ‘crowd’, posing questions, requests for ideas and general input. The crowd could be made up of a group of brand fans, subscribers or followers who have a level of interest in the improvement of a product, offering or service. By gaining input from the masses, the brand achieves a great number of viewpoints and inspirations in a short space of time and potentially covering a wider selection of viewpoints and abstract ideas.

So, we know what crowdsourcing is, but does it work?

Crowdsourcing does require investment for it to be of value. But this doesn’t necessarily have to be financial. You could begin with a simple approach to crowdsourcing and empower a member of your marketing team to create and then leverage a following, for example, via Twitter. Communication is real-time and you can generate a relatively large number of followers fairly quickly if you have a known brand.

Many brands are now investing in crowdsourcing for a variety of reasons, some of which are cited as examples above. And many are finding great successes from doing so. A recently publicised and unintentional crowdsourcing example comes from Air New Zealand, with its latest ad campaign inspiration being taken from a customer tweet – you can read more about it on Brand Republic – it’s a nice idea, and a different take on the usual airline ad messaging.

There are a host of other brands successfully using crowdsourcing for various benefits – check out the list below (courtesty of Open Innovators) for examples of real brands making embracing crowdsourcing:

• Dell IdeaStorm - external idea sourcing
• P&G Open Innovation Challenge - external idea sourcing in Britain
• Ideas4Unilever - corporate venturing
• BMW Customer Innovation Lab - in german
• Staples Invention Quest - idea contest - site no longer live but you can read more about it here
• Kraft - innovate with Kraft
• Vocalpoint - P&G’s network for women
• Betavine - Vodafone’s mobile app community
• My Startbucks Idea - shaping the future of Starbucks
• Nintendo Wiiware - nintendo embraces crowdsourcing
• LEGO Factory - LEGO co-creation tool
• Nespresso - design contest for coffee machines
• Muji - improving and suggesting new designs
• Fluevog - open shoe design

So is crowdsourcing for you?

This may well sound obvious, but it depends on your brand, product/service and objectives. Crowdsourcing brings a number of marketing benefits such as brand awareness, consumer engagement, the building of a community and potential press coverage. Alongside this, it also brings with it genius from the masses – it is effectively a giant brainstorm. If these benefits work for you, then you should probably consider investing in a crowdsourcing programme…

Jocelyn Kirby
Marketing & Business Development Manager
Twitter @ JocelynKirby