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Crowdsourcing may be the “new big thing on the leading edge” or a dressed-up golden oldie. Either way, you can leverage the power of the Internet as a force-multiplier. Here are four ideas to get you thinking but don’t ignore the warnings.
1. Get to new products faster, more cost-effectively. Maybe you’ve heard of Threadless, a community-based T-shirt outfit that uses its public to both source and then evaluate its shirt designs. Loyal crowdmembers log on to Threadless.com to vote for their favorites. The winning entries are then printed and presented for sale – which generates double-digit millions in annual revenues. An Entrepreneur.com article by Emma Johnson gives more detail about how Threadless uses the worldwide web and social networking to grow its revenues. Would it work for products and services with longer development cycles and heavy technical requirements? Sure it does. Procter and Gamble reportedly uses crowdsourcing (among 140,000+ freelance scientists and engineers from 170 countries) to help solve research and development problems with its products.
2. Get a survey online – get smart research data back in a hurry. Is any marketer not aware that the Internet is fundamentally altering how marketing research is done? Low-cost online survey tools like Survey Monkey make it simple for just about any company, institution or organization to design, and conduct survey research affordably. The use of social media for research is booming, too. This is where crowdsourcing ought to take off, especially if you want “smart” data – the stuff that you will be able to use to [a] impress company management and [b] actually use to adjust how you bring programs, products or services to your stakeholders. Aim for a combination of digital and analog answers and you can have your numbers and the psychology to back them up. All from sourcing to the right crowd.
3. Get users into your creative messaging process. You know that ad agencies pretty much hate the idea of “amateurs” making commercials and posting them on Youtube, right? But if there’s a mass market involved, crowdsourcing combines customer passion for your product or service with your prospect demographics and the new ways of distributing messages. Writing on BNET, Jennifer Alsever described how Chipotle Mexican Grill got its customers to make its TV commercials several years ago: Thanks to MySpace and YouTube, the 60 contest videos netted 17.3 million views in just three weeks in November, and one of the ads single-handedly garnered more than 8 million views.
4. Get total campaign production from anywhere in the world. A European crowdsourcing site called Eyeka.com lets big and little companies – even big ones like Canon, L’Oreal, Vivendi and Vodafone to name just a few – the chance to access and use the creative talents of 75,000 “creators.” This is a virtual assembly of semi-professionals in the fields of graphic design, photography and videography who compete for prizes. Right now, Honda in France is looking for a video touting its hybrid cars – this one’s worth €9,000 ($12,000+) to the winning crowdsourcer.
Yes, share success when you succeed. That’s Warning No. 1: Reward your crowd. Threadless design winners get cash and swag. Chipotle YouTube commercial winners earned $50k. Failure to acknowledge your collaborators will result in (virtually) instant outing online. You don’t want your lack of courtesy to show up on Facebook, do you?
Then there’s the time suck. Warning No. 2: Managing crowdsource projects requires a lot of time. One reason companies of all sizes use crowdsourcing is to save money on professional marketing support. But there’s a strong need to manage the crowdsourcing process properly and that could mean hours and days. If you’ve got ‘em to spend, super-duper.
If your work-time is as limited as your budget, well, don’t start something you can’t effectively manage to a conclusion. Go ahead and use your ad agency or design firm instead. Tell them Signalwriter sent you.
It’s been coming for at least two years. It was “formally” announced in a Chevrolet commercial aired during the 2008 Olympics. It became the butt of jokes during the Detroit meltdown – and so did General Motors.
It’s the Chevy Volt. Maybe it’ll get 230 miles-per-gallon-equivalent. Maybe it’ll never see the light of day, although the pre-production test cars have been completed. Maybe I’m being unfair. But you know, a car isn’t a software package – people who want to buy won’t wait on Volt vaporware (remember that term?). American consumers will buy Toyota hybrids and Hondas.
Commenting on Autoblog, “Owlafaye” noted:
The Volt is being designed according to General Motors’ old way of doing business. By the time it gets to market it will be an obvious anachronism. The advanced automotive technology from a myriad of other manufacturers, and due to debut at the time of (and before) the Volt, will bury this foolishness and relegate it to Edsel status.
I normally defend good marketing but it seems like Chevrolet has confused teasing the public with unfulfilled promises, again. Are you a believer? Too bad.
Can a giant corporate brand deliver real warmth and charm? 
Where do the great brands come from? Lots of iconic brands and their logos arrive from countries outside the US. Although there’s a strong slant to European firms, Japan’s brands are easily as strong or stronger in most market segments and ought to be highlighted more frequently. (I bet they’re even better known on the West Coast.)
Depending on your age, marital/family situation or even industry, you probably recognize the Toyota brand logo by now, if not exactly how it came to be. Honda. Shiseido. Sony and Nintendo are just as well known. On the other hand, you may not immediately identify Sanrio though everybody knows its corporate symbol, Hello Kitty® - now 35 years old.
Another cat-using approach is even more evocative and extremely effective: The mother cat carrying its kitten carefully between its teeth. This is the very familiar logo of Yamato Transport, visible on thousands of trucks all over Japan. It was introduced in 1957. It turns its back on the circles-and-squares school of logo design and graphically symbolizes the careful and efficient handling of goods.
It works as hard in B2B branding as it does B2C branding. And I ought to note than you need to be a frequenter of docks and commercial office parks to see it in this country; in the US, Yamato is focused on international freight shipping and does not compete directly against FedEx or UPS.
Like any great logo, it has a great story. “Yamato” itself was the name of ancient Japan and it founded private parcel delivery there 90 years ago…a long-lasting brand in the Japanese market. Looking at sites online, you can see that the delivery trucks are everywhere.
The mama-cat logo, though, only dates back to 1957. It’s a vivid example of the Japanese ability to see things – read brands – from angles that don’t quite match the sometimes gray-suited reputation of large Japanese corporations. On that note, comparing the Yamato brand to Nippon Express is worth doing.
The black cat trademark is immediately recognizable and people love it: There is no cultural baggage about black-cat-bad-luck in Japan. In Miyazaki’s animated film “Kiki’s Delivery Services,” about a young witch who leaves home to become a delivery girl, her familiar is a black cat. The original story was written in 1985 – I wonder if the cat – Jiji – came from Yamato Transport?
Corporate brands sometimes have difficulty expressing humanity, presuming they even want to do so. With “Black Cat Yamato,” this outfit started out there, achieving brand power over time.
