Crowd control, crowd management, crowd curation – whatever you want to call it, we’re seeing a definite shift away from the traditional concept of Crowdsourcing to a better-managed model that cuts out all the crap but keeps all the good stuff.

Anyone who has launched their own company in recent years has probably encountered the myriad of Crowdsourcing platforms offering everything from logo and web design, to WordPress themes and banner ads.

There really is no shortage of such platforms…so go on, take your pick. But don’t be surprised if the outcome is a little less than you were hoping for.

Fly-by-night

You see, any fly-by-night ‘creative’ can sign-up for inclusion in the database of most of these platforms. Sure, you may well get the digital world’s answer to Michelangelo working on your next design before they get snapped up by one of the big agencies – though we must stress that this is highly unlikely. You are more likely to get a hobbyist or perhaps a part-time plumber.

The price of quality?

You really can’t put a price on genuine quality…which is why many of the big brands have continued to use traditional ‘Madison Avenue’ style creative agencies. It’s not through loyalty, it’s because they know that they’ll get creative professionals with a proven track-record working on their projects. But they also get all the costs associated with such agencies, costs incurred through swanky meeting spaces, ‘lunches’ and other overheads.

A new era for Crowdsourcing

It’s this growing number of low-budget/competition-based Crowdsourcing platforms, combined with a desire for better value-for-money, which is heralding a new era for ‘Crowdsourcing’.

So Crowdsourcing, as a technique, is becoming more sophisticated as the demand for high quality supersedes the demand for low prices.

Most of the higher-quality Crowdsourcing services available specialise in very niche creative areas. For example, there are logo and design Crowdsourcing platforms, ad and video platforms, coding platforms…but very few offer the full works.

Bringing creatives together…

If you’re building a content-rich website, you may need logos, coding, designers, video-producers, SEO specialists and any other type of creative specialists. Traditional Madison Avenue agencies would either do all this in-house, or outsource the creative elements it didn’t have the capacity or expertise for in-house. The Creative Services Exchange (CSX) model does exactly what it says on the tin (thanks, Ronseal…).

The CSX brings together professionals from across all creative disciplines, meaning projects of all scope will receive the same creative care of a traditional agency.

So Crowdsourcing, it seems, is finally coming of age. Quality, creative and cost-effective…you can’t say fairer than that.

The impact of old media has resulted in glossy food programmes and magazines but increasingly it is apparent that people merely view these and then discard them. The area that  have a definite impact on our culture are the internet and social media. Blogging platforms like Tumblr, Blogger and WordPress have lead to a mass sharing of  ideas from anywhere in the world.

This increased interactivity has been used on a corporate basis with Vitamin V getting people to vote on Facebook for a flavour for their new Connect drink. The winner was the Black Cherry Lime flavour with added caffeine and 8 key nutrients. Japanese noodle company Acebook used a similar approach in coming up with a new flavour but opted to use emerging social networking site Mixi, their new flavour range that went on sale in December included Collagen Noodles and Ginseng Chicken. If nothing else this shows that corporations should be wary of handing decisions over to consumers.

It is when you integrate the crowd, communicate with people directly and honestly that you see the best results. One area that crowdsourcing has shone in is the circulation of recipes. The best example of this is Tasty Kitchen. This originated as a  blog by Ree Drummond on Word Press where she blogged about her experiences living on a ranch. After a while she posted her first recipe and due to the positive response Tasty Kitchen grew organically from that. Unlike other food websites, such as the BBC’s, anyone can post a recipe up and anyone can join and rate the recipes. This level of crowd interaction, of contribution and feedback, is Tasty Kitchens strength. It has around 25,000 recipes on it and the user can easily rate them and leave comments to improve the experience for the next user. This level of crowdsourcing, on an impressive global scale, is something that has been missing from our lives. Culinary knowledge used to be passed done the generations but after the restrictions imposed by rationing during and after the Second World War this chain was broken. It’s websites such as Tasty Kitchen that can reinstate it. Unlike using a cookery book you can interact with the cooks behind the recipes and understand what you’ve done wrong and leave feedback as to what you liked about the recipe. The digital food revolution is rekindling our love with the physical act of cooking.

*Statistics taken from the Food Statistics Pocketbook 2010

First of all came Linkedin answers, which as most of us know is probably the
worst way to get any questions answered and/or to get any sense out of anyone.
Now we add quora in to the mix and it is open access playtime for anyone with
an opinion. There is the key, right there, that single word, OPINION. Opinion
in most cases is quite valid but not unless based on the three elements of
KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE & CREDIBILITY.

Try this little experiment, ask everyone you know and everyone you can find a
question. See if you can get a sensible answer, a coherent view on what it is you
need help with. I am sure that you would get a lot of ‘don’t knows’ or ‘I read an
article about that’, not enough ‘I tried that’ or ‘That’s what I do everyday’.

In late 2010 and now in to 2011 we are focusing very much on the ‘wisdom
of the credible’. Crowdsourcing is great, it really works, on any subject, topic
or question, but, and here is the big but, it works in smaller focused, vetted
groups of people that have met a criteria to give credible feedback. This can
be customers, your audience, friends & randoms, that part doesn’t matter, it is
focusing on who to ask and then who to listen to.

Here are my top 5 tips:
1. Have set criteria of the types of people who can influence your goal.
2. Vet each person before you invite him or her.
3. If it is open access, the cream normally rises to the top, get them in to a ‘next
level group’.
4. User the power of the crowd to weed out the high flyers.
5. Keep track of crowd participants, good ones are hard to find and loyalty works.

Thanks to bethehurricane.com for a thought-provoking post!

The old saying goes: ‘two heads are better than one’. So lots and lots of heads must be even better? Right?

Some would say otherwise, that utilising Crowdsourcing for things like testing and improving open source software or gathering data is risky and will  lead to poor results and unreliable data. That the wisdom of many leads to confusion of many. This is a myth.

There are different types of Crowdsourcing for different tasks. Bounded Crowdsourcing, the type used at blur Group, is where a network of experts are assigned a task. The wisdom of the crowd isn’t in doubt as the crowd is made up of professional people that are experts in their fields. The results delivered are second to none as we only have the best people in our Crowds. This is also the case with many open sourced software packages. The people having input into the software are developers. These people know computers and software inside out. Literally. It is what they do and they are experts in doing it.

The only time that Crowdsourcing carries a risk of becoming innacurate or unreliable is when we deal with unbounded Crowdsourcing. This is the opposite of bounded Crowdsourcing, meaning that the crowd is more open and not populated by experts. This is an advantage when trying to find out the opinion of a group ‘layman’, people not educated in a particular field. Both these types of Crowdsourcing have their own strengths and appropriate uses. As long as each is used in the correct context, the correct data will be collected or the end product will be produced.

If utilised in the right way, Crowdsourcing has the potential to change the way all manner of businesses operate for the better.

Welcome to the future of business as we know it.

In 2006 Jeff Howe, a writer for Wired magazine, coined the term ‘Crowdsourcing.’

‘Crowdsourcing’ represented the change in attitude towards the internet as solely a communication and research tool, into its modern day guise as a worldwide marketplace, a live business forum and a new-aged globalised workforce. Virtual communities have come to the fore and are very much the present.

“No one has a monopoly on knowledge the way that, say, IBM had in the 1960s in computing, or that Bell Labs had through the 1970s in communications,” said Henry Chesbrough, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School.

He continued: “When useful knowledge exists in companies of all sizes and also in universities, non-profits and individual minds, it makes sense to orient your innovation efforts to accessing, building upon and integrating that external knowledge into useful products and services.”

The presence of Crowdsourcing and availability of knowledge has changed the equation for business.  A small business can now compete on an equal footing with the likes of Procter and Gamble or IBM. Too good to be true?

Let’s look at some examples of effective and ineffective Crowdsourcing;

Golden rule number one: crowds need a leader.

One of the classic differences that has afflicted many businesses has been the failure to find a distinction between the use of managed and unmanaged crowds.

Cambrian House, a Crowdsourced community that develops new business and technology- despite forming a crowd of more than 50,000 members and 7,000 ideas, it has failed to interact with their crowds and implement these ideas.

Cambrian House CEO, Michael Sikorsky, said:

“A key assumption for us, which proved out NOT true: given a great idea with great community support and great market test data, we would be able to find (Crowdsource) a team willing to execute it OR we could execute it ourselves. We needed amazing founding teams for each of the ideas – this is where our model fell short…

“Hence: the wisdom of crowds worked well in the model, but it was our participation of crowds’ aspect which broke down. Trying to find people willing or capable to take on the offspring (our outputs) of the CH model was hard and/or incredibly time consuming.”

The crowd is not enough- it needs to be managed and needs an inspiring leader to guide it.

Golden rule number two: don’t forget your key marketing principles.

Traditional marketing strategies and safeguards are also necessary.

Kraft’s Vegemite, already a well-established brand in Australia, piloted a Crowdsourced marketing ‘name’ campaign for a new product of Vegemite and cream cheese. After narrowing the public entries into a shortlist, Kraft executives picked a winning entry- iSnack 2.0. Two days later it was withdrawn.  

The public response to the new branding was defiant: a Facebook poll asking what people thought of the name had over 20,000 responses- and 97% hated it. Using the general public to formulate a name is one thing- making the public connect with it is quite another. Viral campaigns are powerful (see the ‘Rage Against The Machine’ Christmas number one bandwagon), and Crowdsourcing a concept cannot be considered the end of the process.     

Procter & Gamble, the company behind the likes of Max Factor, Fairy Liquid and Oral-B, have built a Crowdsourcing model to supplement the work of their 7,000 person workforce. Nearly 50% of P&G’s products are involved in Crowdsourcing, in areas including packaging, design, marketing models and research methods.

P&G use vocalpoint.com- a virtual crowd of 240,000 female consumers in the US to promote its own and partner brands. Where Kraft had failed spectacularly with Vegemite, Vocalpoint, is an open forum which tests out P&G’s proposed strategy to discover what works, what people like, and what creates an initial buzz about the product.

So where does the future take us?

Unilever have recently announced the ‘Unilever Consumer Creative Challenge’.

According to Marketing magazine: “In collaboration with MOFILM, a community of aspiring film-makers, Unilever will seek video content for 13 of its brands: Lynx, Ben & Jerry’s, Close Up, Dove deodorant, Wall’s ice cream, Knorr, Lifebuoy, Lipton, Comfort, Sure, Surf, Sunsilk and Vaseline.”

As more ‘Fast Moving Consumer Goods’ (FMCG) giants such as Unilever adopt more managed Crowdsourced campaigns, the greater their impact and popularity. Of course, it is too early to say how successful or problematic Unilever will find their consumer challenge to implement. But, as P&G have proven, it is a model that can be incorporated into existing business models and can be executed perfectly.

Outsourcing discovered the concept of work as globalisation. Open-sourcing discovered the concept of working externally. Crowdsourcing is discovering the concept of working socially. To prove a successful marketing strategy, businesses must be prepared to put aside necessary amounts of time to engage with their crowd and adopt Crowdsourcing as a genuine marketing principle, as opposed to an unmanaged novelty act.

Can Crowdsourcing change The World? It just might…

Get It Done are a Crowdsourced aid agency, whose mantra is to bring the personal connection back to giving aid. Get It Done aim to, as they put it, ‘bring aid back to where it once started: as the basic human activity of taking care of the people you are connected to’.

They do this by utilising the huge scope of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, allowing users to set up their own aid projects. Each selected project is given a webpage and a widget, with users able to put their widget, or the widget of a project they support, on their social network page and share with friends. Once placed, the widget functions as a ‘window’ through which users can communicate and will be updated about their project’s progress. The widget also enables donations to be made easily and free of any charge. As Get It Done put it, ‘No middlemen, no fees’.

Get It Done has the potential to move the goal posts of giving aid, making the whole process more personal and relevant to the individual. It will enable smaller, less publicised causes to gain a much wider press and greater raise the money neccesary to fulfil their objectives. Using social media in such a way means G.I.D can Crowdsource the opinions of individuals, finding out the causes that are relevant to various areas, age groups, genders and so on. It will give each individual a voice and could lead to a new, digital led, wave of fund raisers and humanitarians.

A very noble Crowdsourcing company.

To read more about Get It Done and the causes they are highlighting, go their website here.