The word crowdsourcing was only added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2011 (and still gets a squiggly red misspelled line under it in Word) and yet in just a few years it has become a defining and alternate source for content marketing. To expand on the definition, crowdsourcing allows businesses to connect with their customers in a pointed way and to solicit opinions and yes content from their core audience. One advantage is the cost – most customers are not compensated at all or at a rate comparable to costs paid to agencies, staff, etc. Another advantage is the immediate response since the contributors come from massive online communities.
The phenomenon has spawned successful cousins such as crowdfunding campaigns where individuals (and companies) reach out to their social media friends and cyberspace audiences to solicit money for themselves and others for things such as medical expenses, new business ventures, emergency relief and other heart-warming situations such as the man from Detroit who walked 21 miles to work every day for 10 years. (Read the story here.)
Coca-Cola shamelessly admitted they were out of creative steam and had no more ideas for marketing strategies when they decided to throw it out to the online masses. They received thousands of ideas and here is one of the video finalists.
But not everyone thinks crowdsourcing is smart or even the right thing to do for content marketing, including Carl Hartman, President of Brand.gineering:
I find crowd sourcing to be offensive. They ask a thousand people to work for free and pay one. The sourcing agency makes most of the money and many are left [to] hold the bag. Put the account into review and spread the work among other agencies to see who actually is getting results, don’t expect people to work for free. Source: Econsultancy Blog
The Super Bowl has been a recent source of crowdsourcing campaigns for big advertisers who solicit :30 commercials from customers, produced on their own time and wallet. Voting in most cases is done in various stages by corporate staff, professional creative types and the general public. This year Doritos had the stage with and the winning entry showed up in the Super Bowl and in other shows and sporting events. They clearly got a big bang for their buck in the form of ideas and also learned a lot about their consumers in the process. You can read more about it in a previous blog post here.
Crowdsourcing isn’t just about videos and we’ll have more successful examples in a future post.
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