Stiegler, Wells, Brunswick

Description

For the past few years, crowdsourcing has been all the rage among marketers. It’s a great concept: Companies broadcast an open call to consumers to create advertising for the brand with the winner being awarded a robust cash-prize. It’s viewed as a way to keep costs down while engaging the consumer with the brand. Brands such as Doritos, Pepsi, General Motors and Unilever have jumped on the bandwagon and the results have, admittedly, been effective. However there are dangers. When consumers deliver their ideas 99% of them are, for lack of a better word, crap. People wielding hand-held cameras and pirated versions of Photoshop are unlikely to provide big ideas. For smaller brands this presents a major problem. Large brands like Doritos have so many followers that the 1% of good ideas they obtain outweighs the other 99%. Smaller brands don’t have as many followers. As a result, fewer quality ideas are submitted. Additionally, even if a few good concepts are received, there are still placements to buy, tweaks to be made and blogs to contact to help spread the word. Suddenly, the cheaper, faster and easier project you hoped for is costly, time consuming and complicated. The agency-client relationship is essential to building a brand. The ability to understand your products, people and needs are vital to developing campaigns that have staying-power and deliver positive ROI. At the end of the day you can’t crowdsource a good working relationship.

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