Even though the term crowdsourcing was coined over three years ago by Jeff Howe in a Wired Magazine article, the concept (or tool as I like to call it) only started to become a buzz word and gain some proper attention mid to late 2009. With global brands like Pepsi, LG, Red Bull and even the UK Labour Party all trying their hand at making use of the crowd, many brand planners and strategists are seriously considering taking their problems to the crowd too. More than this, as crowdsourcing becomes more popular, there are countless opportunities for small business and start-ups to harness the power of the crowd in their strategies - and why not? As our Client Strategy Director Scott Gray always says, “Nobody is smarter than everybody”. With this in mind, I thought I would put together a list of five things you need to think about before you embark on a crowdsourcing project of your own.
Image Credit: The Marketing Assassin
1. The Brief - Comprehensively outline your problem or challenge.
It may seem obvious, but comprehensively understanding what your problem or challenge is (and being able to define it succinctly) is the starting place for any crowdsourcing project. Having a good understanding of your problem or challenge will inform every step of your project and make it easier to execute flawlessly in the end. Ultimately you are looking for a representation of your problem that can't be interpreted in any other way. The writing of the brief that you will eventually put out to your crowd is also very important. Not only do you have to make sure that anyone who is a part of your crowd or community can understand the challenge as clearly as possible, but it is essential that you give some sort of guidance as to what you would like to come out as a result. For example, do you want a print ad or some sort of ambient activation? This also has to be done while giving your community enough space to experiment with and come up with something truly fresh. You also have to keep in mind that most crowdsourcing projects can be easily accessed by your competitors and it is imperative that no strategically sensitive information be given out lest any advantage is lost. The aim is to end up with a brief that explains exactly what your problem is, what output is required and to leave your crowd or community asking as few questions as possible.
Bottom Line: Take your time defining your problem and writing your brief. The better this is done, the easier the rest of the project will fall into place.
2. The Crowd - Define your crowd and the spaces they play in.
The next step is deciding what the crowd that you would like to tackle your problem looks like. The nature of the brief and the expected output will directly affect this. If your brief is looking for a new logo design for your business, you will be more inclined to look to communities on platforms like 99designs or CrowdSPRING which are populated by illustrators and graphic designers. Briefs that look for finished work are often called spec work, something which many professional designers take issue with. I would advise you to read up on the No-Spec movement and their concerns before you take this route. On the flip side, if you are looking for a fresh idea (in other words not a finished bit of work but rather a concept) to leverage some existing campaign or even sponsorship, a platform like Idea Bounty might be more suited. Our platform, Idea Bounty, avoids the No-Spec argument due to the fact that briefs on the platform are not looking for finished work. If you decide that you are not going to make use of an existing community and instead are going to build one of your own, try and build on communities that already exist (your Facebook fan page for example). It is VERY important to remember that community is the glue of any crowdsourcing project. How this community is treated (rewarded, communicated with and motivated) is key to the success of any crowdsourcing project. It is very difficult to build large communities from scratch and there are many platforms out there that have existing communities and processes - use them, it will save you time and money. When searching for your community, keep the focus on those that group around similar practices (design, copywriting, strategy etc.) rather than what they think - you are after diversity after all. Along with a solid brief, having a motivated and well-managed crowd/community is essential to a positive outcome.
Bottom Line: Community is everything, they are your economically productive unit. Make sure you pick the right one to take on your project and make sure they are treated correctly - in other words, like gold.
3. The Rules - Clearly explain process and inner legal workings of your project.
Again this might seem very obvious but it is still extremely important, and will depend on your brief and the problem/challenge it contains. Most existing crowdsourcing platforms will have all the processes and legal issues worked out for you. It is still imperative that you understand these processes and agree with them. You need to think of everything from deadlines and how long people will have to respond to your problem, formats in which solutions must be submitted (Word Doc, PDF), how the winning idea will be selected (community vote or a judging panel) right down to who owns solutions once they are submitted and the project is closed. The idea is to be as clear as possible about these processes, especially any legally related issues. By definition, crowdsourcing involves the transfer of intellectual property and this needs to be handled with care. Make sure there is a set-in-stone 'terms and conditions' that all contributors have agreed to and make sure this is easily avalible for anyone to look through. It goes without saying that these terms and conditions must be as fair as possible to all parties. If the crowd feels that taking part is too complicated or that they will be exploited, they will leave and then you’ll be faced with a problem - no crowd to source from. A good example of a platform with a legal system that does a very good job at protecting the crowd’s interest is Idea Bounty. In this case, each submission is owned by the person who submitted it until it is bought (or exchanged for the Bounty) by a client.
Bottom Line: Be 100% transparent. If the crowd feels at any point that they are being taken for a ride, being exploited or ill-treated, things could end up very badly for you.
4. The Engagement - Plan how you are going to engage with your crowd and stick to it.
Crowdsourcing is a full-time commitment and you need to be aware of what you are getting yourself into. Since you are throwing a brief out to a crowd and asking for a response, you have to expect that the crowd is going to want to talk back to you and ask questions. In their eyes, you are initiating a conversation with them and you have to be ready to participate. The easiest way to think about crowdsourcing is that it is a form of Social Media - any rules which apply to your Social Media marketing tactics probably apply to your crowdsourcing project. As mentioned above, most platforms will have processes and channels in place to engage with their community. Be it through forums, comment threads, direct channels of communication like email or even Social Media channels such as Twitter. Directly related to the channels through which you engage your community is the way it is managed. The management of the community, just like Social Media, is almost a full-time job. Starbucks, for example, employ a full team of 20 people to manage content and conversations on their crowdsourcing platform mystarbucksidea.com. Some platforms, like Idea Bounty, offer management of your briefs while others don’t. You need to be aware of this and have the resources avalible if you are going to be managing the process yourself. Another thing to consider is how you should be promoting your brief to a broader audience. You need to decide if you want all your consumers to participate in your brief or a select group of people - such as all the graphic designers. This will dictate whether you spend money on an accompanying print campaign in main stream media or banner ads on select design-orientated websites, for example. Going back to the point above about community being key to your project, effective engagement contributes to a happy community and therefore a better outcome in the end.
Bottom Line: A crowdsourcing project is just like any Social Media tool - you are engaging with a crowd so expect a conversation. Talk to them, answer questions and most importantly, constantly feedback on what’s going on.
5. The Outcome - Make it clear how your final selection and rewarding process will work.
I have already spoken about being very clear about how you arrive at your final selection be it an idea or completed logo design, for example. Generally there are two ways this works - by community vote, or via a panel of judges. If you go the community voting route you need to be fully prepared to accept what the resulting outcome is. You can, for example, let the community vote for your new logo only for you to decide you don’t like it and then choose to go for something else. This, as you can imagine, will do no less than seriously enrage your crowd. Likewise, if you choose to pick the winner yourself as the client or through a judging panel, make sure that this process is clearly explained and laid out. Another thing you need to consider is the process of filtering the submissions. Science fiction writer, Theodore Sturgeon, had a maxim that went “90% of everything is crap”. This, to a degree, certainly applies to a crowdsourcing project. To clarify here, what typically happens is that a project will receive so many good submissions that it is very difficult to pick out the real gold - it is a case of finding the really excellent solutions amongst all the good ones. You need to make sure that there are systems in place to help you filter the submissions (such as Idea Bounty's idea scoring system) in order to get rid of the rubbish and separate the gold form the real precious gems. It is also often a good idea to feedback on the judging and selection process, even if you are selecting your winner by crowd vote. You will often find that even if people don’t win, if they received constructive feedback they will feel just as appreciated and rewarded – merely because you took the time to engage and respect their participation. They are also more likely to come back and participate again if you ever decided to throw another problem out to the crowd. On this note, you also need to make sure that your crowd is properly rewarded for their efforts. Usually this is in the form of a monetary prize. If this is the case, you need to make sure that the reward is equal to the effort involved. So don’t give away $10,000 for a logo design and $1,000 for the flat art of an entire website. You also don’t have to restrict yourself to monetary rewards - look into things like leaderboards, credits, exclusive access to certain briefs, stronger voting rights and other social incentives.
Bottom Line: Crowdsourcing will more than likely provide you with numerous solutions to your problem. Make sure your community knows how you will pick the winner and how they will be rewarded in return. It is also imperative that the reward is equal to the effort involved.
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