Crowdsourcing seems to be method “du jour” of executing all sorts of marketing activity, you can crowdsource your new logo, business cards, brochures or website design you can crowdsource the production of videos like Doritos has done with their Superbowl ads for the last seven years, you can crowdsource app development and with Kickstarter, the grand-master of crowdsourcing, you can even crowdsource the funding for your next movie.
While crowdsourcing as a production model isn’t new, I had never heard of marketing teams actually crowdsourcing their marketing. A recent article from OpenView Labs discussed how some savvy companies are leveraging crowdsourcing to generate content, fuel campaign virality and conduct cost-effective market research. The companies featured had tremendous success, but this is no coincidence. Just like any marketing strategy, you need to set clear objectives and execute well to get the best out of the model.
The article outlines three unique crowdsourcing approaches utilised by several companies to leverage customer engagement. The first, an online payment company for developers, hosted a mock “hack-a-thon” to engage its software developer audience. By appealing to their competitive spirit and problem solving inclinations, the company was able to garner blog coverage and reach a wider audience than ever before.
With the recent re-branding of tom tom communication I chose to go down the path of a crowdsourced design for the new logo and business cards. I was somewhat sceptical, having had mixed experiences using other outsourced designers, so I was concerned about being swamped with low quality work that would take a long time to wade through. However the “risk free” approach, low cost and speed of turn-around was enough for me to give it a go.
As it turned out, my fears were unfounded. While there were some designs that were clearly low quality and off brief, there were enough quality designs that made selecting the final winner a very difficult process.
One of the best features of using a crowd-sourced method, apart from access to a global talent pool, and the extremely timely (under a week) and cost-effective (about $500) process to develop a new brand is the ability to have your clients provide input and feedback. I appreciated their thoughtful comments on the direction the brand was taking and took on board their feedback. In turn I hope that they felt engaged with the new business – plus it’s a lot of fun! Everyone has an opinion.
In discussing my success with this process with my clients and other marketers, they pointed out to me, that I would’ve been clear about what I was looking for, and able to provide direction to designers to achieve the required outcome. This is a vastly underestimated factor in using any outsourcing provider. The ability to communicate clearly, your brand, your target audience is something that many non-marketers may find tricky. In fact, this is something that the Chief Operating Officer of of 99designs covered in his article on how to get the best out of designers, his very first point is about being clear. “The thing that designers like the most is someone who knows what they want. You have to clearly describe the nuances of your product or service for a designer to efficiently deliver a design you love.”
Good design requires a good brief
More importantly that than “you get what you pay for” in a crowd-sourced model “you get what you put in”. The responsibility is on you as the client to provide a detailed brief articulating the business vision, the target market as well as regular, on-going feedback throughout the design process. This goes far beyond “just make it look good”. The quality of the work received is very closely aligned with the quality of the brief and the feedback given during the process. We've put together a creative agency briefing template that can help you with this task.
A good brief requires a solid understand of your buyer
Without a solid understanding of the buyer of your product and services it’s difficult to come up with a brief that clearly articulates your value proposition to the target market. Understanding your buyer is more than just traditional top-level segmentation (i.e. companies with 500+ people, in the major capital cities, in the telecommunications industry), it requires research, both internally and externally, customer interviews and a detailed process to “humanise” who this person is and their likes and dislikes. This work then becomes the foundation of not just your new branding, but all your marketing. We’ve written an eBook about understanding buyer personas and their impact on your marketing. Get your copy here.. we’d love to help you put the foundations in place for marketing success.
