Crowdsourcing has become a buzz word in social media, particularly after the recent bad publicity from the Gap disaster in rebranding (http://www.futerra.co.uk/blog/858).
Crowdsourcing is defined as:
The outsourcing of tasks that are traditionally performed in house or contracted out to a professional, to a large group of people or a community through an open call.”
This phenomenon frequently relies on the use of social media to allow companies to develop an open call with a community or ‘crowd.’ The aim is for the community to provide a variety of solutions to the companies problems. After this the members of the group pick the solution they believe best solves the companies problem.
Once the best solution has been picked by the crowd, the answer becomes owned by the company. Potentially there may be some form of reward for either the creater of the chosen idea or the group.
This creates the key point of criticism towards Crowdsourcing, as companies are outsourcing work, without contractual agreement or wages, for services that would otherwise be very expensive.
However, despite this bad publicity towards Crowdsourcing, there are positive and innovative examples of how this phenomenon can be used to help brands solve problems while also creating a strong relationship with its users.
Hear are some some benchmark examples of Crowdsourcing:
1. Fashion stake: https://www.fashionstake.com/
On this websites fashion designers post images from their sample designs. If users of the site like the design they are able to buy a $50 ’stake’ in the design. If the garment receives enough stakes to cover its manufacture then the product is sold exclusively on Fashion Stake. A portion of the sales are returned to the user as site credit. Other features on this sight include the ability for users to review items and communicate with designers, helping designers obtain a better understanding of their target market.
2. James Patterson’s AirBorne
Author James Patterson gave control to his readers for his book AirBorne. He wrote the first and last chapter of this book and gave over responsibility of the other 28 chapters.
3. Waze: http://www.waze.com/homepage/
Waze is a traffic application, where by simply having the app open on your phone is enough to update traffic information for other users. Users phone’s GPS are tracked, allowing Waze to register the speed at which users are travelling. Other functions include allowing users to flag other more substantial traffic issues such as accidents or speed traps.
4. Brand Tags: http://www.brandtags.net/
This site shows users a company logo and then asks them to write the first word that comes to their mind about the company. These responses are then arranged in a ‘tag cloud’ displaying the most frequent words associated with that logo. This allows companies to re-evaluate how consumers view their brand, obtaining an honest opinion from a target size frequently unobtainable in conventional research.
These four examples show the breadth of examples currently available to illustrate the uses of crowdsourcing. If implemented in a responsible manner then there is no reason why companies can not use the internet and social media to tap into an exceptionally large sample of users and skilled fans, not only generating new ideas but also helping to build upon the relationship between the two.
