Who does the crowd really work for? (more thoughts on what drives the crowd)

Note: in virtually ever case my posts refer to The open crowd on CS platforms that invite innovation, visual content, advertising and design solutions.

The open crowd - free range crowd? - is populated essentially by non-experts. And in that sense you'd think an expert in the crowd could clean up and win contest after contest. (If you're an expert playing in the crowd let me know about your experiences!)

I've witnessed many winning solutions that are clearly off-brief. (And heavily dissed in the forums by livid community members) The winning solution providers are earnest and sincere in their efforts and often show some extraordinary creativity. Getting off-brief is easy. That's were crowd managers and brand keepers should be stepping up. Hard to do with 1500+ crowd members. We still have account execs and creative directors in the trad agencies that struggle with the task too. And the less precise the brief the harder the task,

Filling all the media channels available to any brand with new content via a regular agency would be cost-prohibitive.

So here come the crowds.

But many of the Cs's vids for brands are painful to watch, proving only how hard it is to actually create and tell a good story in 30 seconds. But the crowds still come and the brand still buys the stuff.

I would suggest that apart from participating in the contest, and reading the brief, no crowd members actually care that much about the brand. How can they? They relationship is not consumer-brand

What drives the crowd?

There seems to be a lot of optimism from crowd leaders and CS platforms suggesting that “brand love” is the motive force behind the crowd. If I drive a VW and I have a predilection for creative expression, then I’ll jump on the chance to participate in a contest that is led by VW. That may indeed describe a very small percentage of the crowd. And it may be especially true for the random, occasional housewife participant, but for the expert crowd or even the enthusiastic novices, human nature would suggest otherwise.

It’s not about the brand, it’s about the contest.

It’s about the size of the prize and most importantly it’s about the the quality of the brief. If the brief is convoluted, overly complex, unclear or just too broad you lose the crowd. Why participate when don’t have a clear idea of what the client is looking for. Even if it’s a “one off” everyone wants to win. Brands who try to determine what they want AFTER they see the 300 solutions is a good way to lose the crowd.