What is crowdsourcing?
by Graham Brown
"Your consumers develop the product"
(see alternative definition on Wikipedia and here)
Why is crowdsourcing important?
In the
industrial marketing era, product development and marketing were two distinct domains. PD made the products, marketing sold them and ne'er the twain shall meet.
The problems with this model are:
* slow time-to-market to improve and release new versions of product
* attention is your biggest cost - consumers who dont have a stake in the product are unattentive
* disconnect and ivory tower problem; eg. product development creates a "problem" that marketing needs to solve as opposed to a joint team effort
How does industrial marketing view crowdsourcing ?Generally crowdsourcing doesn't feature in industrial marketing because getting consumers to innovate would take the raison d'etre away from the product development labs and thus threaten their jobs.
Who gets it?
*
Walkers,
BMW,
Netflix,
Toyota,
Lego,
P&G,
Dell,
Starbucks,
Best Buy,
Mountain Dew,
Threadless,
Zara,
Jones Soda,
RYZ Wear,
FatMuffin,
Goosegrade,
Unigo,
Kideko,
VW, Bon Bon Kakku
Who doesn't?* Everyone else
Key points about Crowdsourcing* Crowdsourcing can develop legs of its own and grow into a new brand - such as
My Starbucks, Best Buy Blue Label,
My Jones (Soda) (
also here),
Mountain Dew's Dewmocracy or
Dell Ideastorm. (
source)
* Crowdsourcing helps build
consumer trust as consumers are more familiar with the products and are in close contact with brand values.
* Crowdsourcing is not only an effective product development tool but can be a highly efficient marketing channel. Walkers drew
800,000 entries in its "
Do us a flavour" crowdsourced campaign (
source).
* Crowdsourcing doesn't just have to be with consumers. Toyota have been working with their value network for some time under their Kaizen strategy.
Employees are a valuable insight into your customer habits. BMW's
Virtual Innovation Agency now works with engineers, innovators and entrepreneurs claiming to generate
4,000 ideas a week.
As one pundit notes, the key reason for
Zara becoming the largest clothing retailer in the world is the insight that salespeople provide about shifting fashion demand
* Crowdsourcing can be specific to a line of area of business - for example "how can we improve our customer recommendations?". Netflix asked this question with a prize
$1 million. Endemol (Bigbrother) are engaged in a similar tactic soliciting
new show ideas.
* You can also incentivize consumers by providing a sales kickback.
Lego Factory is currently offerin
designers a cut of the sales on their crowdsourced product lines.
* Technology companies can draw from valuable insights and a ready-to-go market
beachhead of "early adopters" to plug into. Nokia, for example, is currently seeking passionate customers to take an “active role in the development and
testing that will help shape Nokia’s next generation of products and
services”. Check out their
betalabs blog* Talking about crowdsourcing in your organization is merely rhetoric without fundamental changes to the company, its measurements and the role of marcomms. Customer dialogue needs to be at the
heart of decision making as opposed to a useful adjunct to policy.
* Crowdsourcing can happen on different levels - from simple insights to giving the consumer full control. Tapping into the
make-it-yourself trend, London-based
SomeRightsReserved offers a range of downloadable blueprints for objects that consumers can build, adapt and personalise.
* Clothing and FMCG are particular popular categories. See also
RYZ Wear,
FatMuffin. Although it can also apply to other areas not often associated with consumer involvement in product development - eg Home Decor (
Bon Bon Kakku/
Kideko) and marketing colleges (
Unigo).
* Crowdsourcing can also be a core part of consumer engagement in content.
Goosegrade is a new service that allows blog readers to suggest edits to blogs.
* The first steps into crowdsourcing are neither expensive or daunting. You can for example, simply hang out where your customers hang out (such as
using Facebook for crowdsourcing). Kraft
tapped into an online community to define and launch its successful South Beach Diet product line without an excessive marketing budget.
* Beware, however, that this is
not the holy grail for all market research and there are
natural limits to what crowdsourcing can achieve.
Resources* feel free to suggest
