A new model for gathering consumer insights?

If you know what they really want and you build it, will they come?

Consumer focus groups get tainted by group dynamics and facilitator bias. I say this only based on prior experience and observation, there are ways to mitigate these effects but can you still trust the results?

When the big brands participate in crowdsourcing for advertising ideas, do they care if they can't actually run or post these efforts on their media channels? It does not really matter. For very little money, they can actually buy some true consumer insights; how their product/service is perceived by the creative consumer is captured in the solutions that they post. At least that's my premise. I think the challenge is in how you write the crowdsource brief. Take note that crowdsource creative briefs look nothing like the ones that a commissioned advertising agency would see. They are vague and stripped of any real information about the brand. And of course, all brand guidelines are ignored as well.

Major Research Project - Introduction 1.

It's time to start crystallizing a direction and research topic for my MRP (major research project at OCAD U). SInce the focus of this blog was originally on open sourced idea generation for the private sector I think I will park my ideas here.

Working towards a definition of crowdsourcing

Here’s a formal definition (below) that I think is worthy of further consideration. It touches upon a very critical issue: the crowd is asked to engage in a process that helps build the profit margins of a company for free. ( valuable data is mined even from some of the unworkable solutions) And when a crowdsourced solution is rewarded, that dollar amount is far below it’s real value to the firm

“Crowdsourcing takes place when a profit oriented firm outsources specific tasks essential for the making or sale of its product to the general public (the crowd) in the form of an open call over the internet, with the intention of animating individuals to make a contribution to the firm's production process for free or for significantly less than that contribution is worth to the firm. Firms engage in crowdsourcing to inexpensively mobilize the creative work of sometimes highly skilled persons as a resource for the generation of value and profits. Tasks that lend themselves to crowdsourcing include product design, advertising, quality monitoring, and the solution of specific technical problems….”

Science, Technology & Innovation Studies Vol. 4, No 1, July 2008

From: Frank Kleemann, G. Günter Voß Kerstin Rieder Un(der)paid Innovators: The Commercial Utilization of Consumer Work through Crowdsourcing

The Crowdsourcing numbers game.

There seems to be a sense of pride for some platforms when they announce the stats of their community.

One contest actually boasted that it had over 15,000 logo ideas. The reality is, in this case, that they really had less than 10 that had any merit (as determined by there professional curators and client). So what’s the point of talking about your “big” numbers? Does it attract clients?

If big numbers attracts more clients it may just start to scare away your crowd. Participants often invest many hours in a crowdsourced project. The more participants, the less chance of a payday. It’s simple arithmetic. 

The bigger the open crowd the more cognitive debris.

If you invite anyone to the party and don’t check their bags at the door be prepared for a very big clean up when it's all over.

I’ve witnessed and participated in the Human Rights Logo competition which claims to have gathered over 15,000 entries. As sincere as some of the submissions were, many other submitters simply gamed the system, “borrowed” ideas, or used the forum to express their negative world views.

Months of infighting, self-serving critiques and non-sensical submissions yielded little in the way of innovative design. Crowdsourcing this task was probably not the best approach: it would appear that some entities decide to “crowdsource” without developing a system of checks and balances to get the most positive work out of their community.  Crowdsourcing does not work without real crowd management. 

"Where good ideas come from.... [Steve Johnson]"

The Co-creation Bandwagon is in town

Let’s just co-create everything. Open our arms to the community and embrace ideas from the masses. It may sound noble and courageous, but we need to be careful when inviting the "community" to participate in creative endeavors just because they can. The democratization of everything can lead to nothing: When you add up all the opposing opinions, similar positions and various ideas of individuals in a community it becomes a homogenizing force and can produce some very boring results. True co-creation takes a lot more effort than a simple invitation to participate and needs to be curated by those that have vision.

Stay Tuned: A new directory of the coolest crowdsourced competitions to come!

A new simple directory of some of the coolest projects will be online soon: this will only represent a handful of the thousands of projects out there. But it'll be a good place to start.

Every week or so I get a flurry of emails announcing the latest and greatest creative brief. They come from all sorts of open crowdsourced platforms, for all kinds of clients. Big global brands and local players. They need creative ideation for every imaginable media: online, experiential, print, mobile device and they offer thousands of dollars. Of course I can't enter them all myself!

So, this is a shout out to all the emerging design and creative talent out there that has the bandwidth to take a shot and win!