Crowded House: How Marketers Can Use Crowdsourcing For Maximum Impact

Outside of social media and viral marketing, crowdsourcing has arguably become one of THE hottest communications techniques in recent years to be used by marketers for greater engagement of, and interaction with, target audiences of all varieties. But for the uninitiated, what is crowdsourcing, and how is it being used today by businesses? Let's explore further...

Crowdsourcing: Origin and Definition
For starters, the term "crowdsourcing" was first coined by Jeff Howe, a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, in his seminal feature story, "The Rise of Crowdsourcing," in the June, 2006 issue of the publication. It is a combination of the words "crowd" and "outsourcing." Howe still writes for the magazine, where he covers the media and entertainment industry, among other subjects. He also continues to cover the phenomenon on his blog, Crowdsourcing.com, and he wrote a book, Crowdsourcing: Why The Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business, on the subject which was released in September, 2008. According to Howe, crowdsourcing is defined as the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee; it could also be an external third party, such as a PR firm or advertising agency), and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call. In his article, Howe explains that because technological advances have allowed for cheap consumer electronics, the gap between professionals and amateurs has been diminished. As a result, brands are now able to take advantage of the talent and real-time input of the public for all sorts of different marketing and product development programs.

How Does Crowdsourcing Work?
Essentially, crowdsourcing acts as a distributed problem-solving and production technique. In a typical crowdsourcing scenario, an issue is broadcast to a known or unknown group of people requesting solutions and/or input on the topic. Individuals, also known as the crowd, then form into online communities, and the crowd submits solutions to the requesting company. Going one step further, the crowd can also potentially sort through all the proposed solutions, and pinpoint the most appropriate ones. In the end, these best solutions are owned by the entity that broadcast the problem in the first place — the crowdsourcer — and the winning individuals in the crowd are usually, but not always, rewarded with prizes or some other form of recognition.


The Four Main Crowdsourcing Strategies
According to Howe, there are four primary crowdsourcing strategies:

• Crowdfunding: An open call to raise funds for a specific business, individual, cause, or non-profit organization.
• Crowdcreation: An open call requesting individuals to join a crowd interested in the requester's mission, products, or services.
• Crowdvoting: An open call for the crowd to vote for a specific choice.
• Crowd Wisdom: An open call to solicit the collective opinion of a crowd, rather than a single expert, to answer a question.

The Benefits of Crowdsourcing
As explained by Howe in his book, and as reinforced by many to today's top marketing experts and social media strategist, crowdsourcing offers the following benefits:

• Problems can be explored at comparatively little cost, and often very quickly.
• Payments are based on results, or not offered at all.
• The organization can tap a wide range of talent than might not be present in its own organization.
• By listening to the crowd, organizations obtain direct insight into their customers' desires.
• The community may feel a direct connection with the brand of the crowdsourcer, the result of an earned sense of ownership through contribution and collaboration.

Real-World Examples from Today's Marketers
With the advent and global popularity of social networks, much of today's crowdsourcing is orchestrated through major social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. In addition, many companies also request input from their respective crowds through their corporate Websites, e-mail newsletters, direct mail pieces, print and online advertisements, and other forms of marketing communication — or in many cases, most or all of the above, to obtain the absolute widest range of feedback from all possible sources. From the marketer's perspective, the more feedback from a brand's multiple target audiences, the better. Marketers can then analyze all of the input and solutions from the crowd, and strategically use that information to best solve the problem.

As mentioned at the beginning, in addition to tapping into the talents and expertise of the crowd, crowdsourcing has become a very popular, low-risk communication channel for directly interacting with and engaging target audiences, and convincing customers that their feedback is both useful and highly valued. Years ago, this high level of engagement was very difficult to create and maintain, but through the aforementioned technology-based vehicles, it is easy and natural in society today.

In terms of real-world examples, here are some excellent recent instances of crowdsourcing at work:

• Gap: Last month, when Gap introduced its new brand identity without consumer input, there was so much negative pushback from long-time Gap shoppers about the visual presence that the company ultimately pulled it down and went back to its original design.
• Procter & Gamble: The company employs more than 9,000 scientists and researchers in corporate R&D, but still have many problems they cannot solve. Employees now post these issues on a dedicated crowdsourcing Website called InnoCentive, and offer large cash rewards to more than 90,000 “solvers” who make up this network of backyard scientists.
• TopCoder: A software development house for outsourced projects. What separates TopCoder from its competitors is that the work is crowdsourced to a community of over 180,000 members from over 200 countries in a competition format.
• Wikipedia: Technically, the globally-popular online encyclopedia is a crowdsourcing-driven initiative.

In many instances, the crowdsourcing initiative is not as extensive or comprehensive as these examples. It could be as simple as a restaurant chain such as Denny's, Red Robin, or California Pizza Kitchen asking its respective crowds to submit ideas for a brand-new healthy menu item. Or a consumer brand, such as Johnson & Johnson or Kraft, asking for the crowd's input on a list of potential names for a new product to be introduced next year. Or a technology company, such as HP or Apple, requesting opinions from its consumer base on choices for a new celebrity spokesperson. And the list goes on and on. Anything that marketers can think of, where consumer or user input would be valuable, is fair game for crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing isn't going away any time soon. In fact, it will become far more prevalent as additional companies realize how extensively they can leverage the collective minds and expertise of their respective customers. So, the next time your business needs some form of creative or strategic direction, ask the crowd. You'll be pleasantly surprised at both the quality and quantity of the input.