Tufts brings video to the college application
I’m not sure what’s more interesting, the fact that the first college to encourage personal videos as part of the application process was Tufts University, a liberal arts college just outside of Boston, or that more than 1000 applicants responded to the optional request.
The former shows just how mainstream content creation has become and the latter reinforces the new level of comfort and familiarity the digital generation has with expressing itself publicly through virtually any medium – images, blogs, videos.
Obviously there are advantages to both college and student. The admissions officers get a better look at the whole student and sense of how creative he or she is. The applicant receives a signal he’s considering a school that thinks progressively and looks beyond the standard academic record and test scores.
Granted the idea of using video as part of the application process isn’t entirely new. Plenty of organizations and contests, from the Ford Fiesta Movement to MTV have employed the technique. And other colleges allow applicants to include portfolios or writing or even websites to augment their application. But this example brings the video application even more mainstream, generating response from kids who aren’t necessarily pursuing careers in film, social media or entertainment.
It seems there are a couple of takeaways. The first is we better make sure our kids (as if they need any help) are good at conveying ideas and arguments using all of the new tools if they’re to compete for a place in those coveted classrooms. (See this blog from 13-year-old Orren Fox.)
But for those of us in the business of advertising, marketing and branding, there’s this. Tufts’s little experiment is clearly one more reminder why user-generated content, crowdsourcing, and personal branding will continue to grow in popularity.
We are only a few years away, at most, from marketing to prospects and communities who themselves are as comfortable at crafting messages, making videos and earning people’s attention as those of us who practice these crafts professionally. And they clearly welcome any opportunity to do so.
Sure, the cynics and over-confident among you will view these videos and feel you have nothing to worry about. It’s not as if any of these are likely to rival a quality TV commercial, or even find enough of an audience to take them viral. But this is still a trend worth watching.
And it should make make things interesting. When we’re all communicators, who’s talking and who’s paying attention?
Is advertising giving crowdsourcing a bad name?
John Winsor hosts Crowdsourcery at Social Media Week
I didn’t get to New York for Social Media Week so I missed catching this crowdsourcery panel live, but did sit through it online. I’m a big fan of John Winsor and Michael Lebowitz as well as Faris Yakob. Three smart guys for sure. Put them at the same table with Denuo’s Seneel Radia and JWT’s Ty Montague and there’s no shortage of wisdom and experience (not to mention opinion) to go around.
In a nutshell (and I paraphrase here), Ty starts with the accurate assessment that crowdsourcing is still so new we don’t really know whether it’s a good or bad thing. Or even how best to apply it. Michael is skeptical that the technique can ever deliver the kind of product that comes out of his agency Big Spaceship since their process is all about collaboration and teamwork. Faris comes right out and questions the “wisdom of the crowd,” preferring instead the line “a person is smart, people are stupid.” And, of course, John, who just launched a company inspired by the possibilities, believes that crowdsourcing can work if the infrastructure is there and a “benevolent dictator” leads.
Michael Lebowitz, John Winsor, Faris Yakob
Frankly I agree with all of them. But for me the problem with the non-stop discussion of crowdsourcing in our industry is that we limit its application to the output of “creative.” We continually think about the technique exclusively as a way to yield a logo, or a TV spot, or a campaign of some sort. And so it remains controversial. We are either “devaluing the expertise of those who’ve spent years mastering a craft. “ Or we’re supposedly “exploiting all the wannabes who are willing to give their time and effort away for a pittance.”
But if we think of ourselves in the business not simply of creating messages (or even platforms) but of helping brands and clients build their businesses, then there are many uses of crowdsourcing. We can actually aid clients in developing new products. Think what Splenda did with its Facebook fans. We can accelerate learning by soliciting reaction to an idea from a willing community of fans. We can stimulate word of mouth marketing just by inviting people to create their own version of the ideas or spots that we conceive (think HP’s You on You). We can even produce finished work that might never be achieved otherwise. Lemonade the Movie, crowdsourced via Twitter, and the 3six5 project come to mind. While these two examples may not be for the benefit of clients or brands, they just as easily could be.
In the last year, Mullen has experimented with crowdsourcing for a number of projects. None were designed to produce the commercial that would run in place of something we could create ourselves. Instead our initiatives have served to inspire participation and co-creation from a community. We crowdfunded for Grain Foods Foundation. We created a blog to help clients and marketers understand Gen Y. We’re in the early stages of inviting Boston Bruin fans to write new “rules.” And we have some interesting ideas for our new client Victorinox Swiss Army.
The same day that John and friends shared their opinions, I met with Randy Corke of Chaordix. We talked about all the things that Chaordix was doing. They’re working with one of the UK’s top universities to reduce infant mortality in developing nations by crowdsourcing the knowledge and experience of all the doctors and nurses working in those countries. They’re showing a major US retailer how to tap into its employees to solve technical problems that will allow for better service, augmenting a small R&D group that’s overworked. They’re even crowdsourding ideas from the general public in Canada to help that country become innovative in the new digital economy. These ideas suggest possibilities far more interesting than securing an inexpensive logo or a user generated TV spot.
If you’re an agency, stop thinking about crowdsourcing for nothing other than creative (even though it can be a great tool for this, too) and consider your clients’ most important business challenges: faster development of new products; improved customers service; alternative distribution channels; new ways to give customers a chance to participate. All of these objectives could be crowdsourced, making an agency more of an asset in the process.
The big brands get it. Dell, Netflix, P & G, Heinz and others use crowdsourcing for all kinds of projects. But there are a lot of smaller or less innovative companies that haven’t yet explored the opportunities. Why not be the one who introduces them to the idea? If it’s not you, chances are it will be someone else.
Is your brand attracting creators?
We used to watch TV. Now we make the videos. We used to read the content. Now we produce it. We used to look at the pictures. Now we take them, upload them and distribute them. We have evolved from spectators to creators.
OK, not all of us, but according to Forrester’s recently updated Social Technographics Ladder, a full 24 percent of all people who went online in 2009 performed one or more of these activities. Forrester calls them the Creators.
And while there are many more people labeled conversationalists (a new category for recognizing people who regularly update their status), joiners and spectators, I think that the 24 percent is the most interesting number. For starters it’s a full 14 percent higher than a year ago. Secondly, it’s 24 percent of the number of people who go online; without a doubt that universe is quite a bit larger than it was just a year earlier. So the actual number of people creating content grew even more than 14 percent.
Why does this matter? For the simple reason that it’s an opportunity for brands and marketers everywhere. Here’s an example. Budweiser produces a spot and it ends up on YouTube. Out of nowhere, one person comes along and creates her own tribute. Just for fun. Just because she wants to. Nice to be a brand with that’s loved.
But in another case, HP runs a campaign and discovers (or plans for) a similar phenomenon, except that in this case hundreds of people come along to create content. Why? Because HP invited them to. Granted the company offered up prize money. But that’s not always a requirement. Consider Art of the Trench. Burberry puts up a website with fashionable images of people wearing trench coats and simply invites anyone with a digital camera and internet access to add to the portfolio. And so it grows.
There are more examples that prove not just willingness but downright enthusiasm. TJX Corporations’s YouTube caroling page got people to sing their favorite carols with very little convincing. Lonely Planet TV regularly receives videos from amateur content creators as they travel the world.
A few months ago I started The Next Great Generation, a community blog for Gen Y to share its thoughts on everything from life and work to brands and technology. So far nearly 100 writers have volunteered to write, edit and manage the blog in return for an opportunity to develop their voice, build their personal reputation, and be part of a community. Granted some were already “creators,” but for many, this was their first foray into content creation.
It strikes me that any brand, charity or organization can build a community of people who will photograph, compose, and produce content. They’ll shoot instructional videos on how they use your product, create parodies or interpretations of your last TV campaign, write stories, post recipes, and take photographs. The evidence is everywhere. From the equivalent of 130,000 full length feature films uploaded to YouTube every week, to the growing list of crowdsourcing startups confident there’s a business model in user generated content.
In Here Comes Everybody Clay Shirky suggests we need to unlearn the lesson that getting paid is the primary motivation for people to make an effort and do any serious work. Instead he reminds us that people don’t simply want to consume media, they want to produce it, shouting “Look what I made,” in the process.
Granted not every brand needs community created content. But is that the point? If consumers want to create it, if they’re willing to generate it, if it further induces them to become a highly effective medium as they pass that content around, don’t you want them creating it? It’s one more way to listen, engage, inspire, build and mobilize your community.
Want content for your brand? Want a community of contributors who’ll spread the content around? All you have to do is invite them and make them feel appreciated for their efforts. What are you waiting for?
Photo by: chibart
Ladder by: Forrester
Thanks to Jason Falls for the inspiration for this post.
I’m stealing this idea from Chris Brogan
Chris Brogan's Social Media Case Study Bookmarks
Anyone who’s spent time in the social media space knows two things. You are what you share. And your product is your content. So it’s no surprise that agencies (of all kinds) are constantly attempting to create content, apps, tools and what not (in addition to their blogs) in order to show their chops, add value to clients and otherwise make it look like they know what they’re talking about.
Among the more notable is Fallon’s Skimmer, an Adobe Air desktop app designed to unify your social media stream. The application earned lots of press and won some awards, but it probably cost a fair amount to develop and has certainly not become a mainstream tool in the vein of something like Tweet Deck.
Colle+McAvoy recently launched Squawq, a simple listening application to collect and analyze tweets based on keywords. It’s functional, easy-to-use and beautifully designed. Plus it makes a positive statement about the agency. Though only time will tell whether it delivers long lasting value for clients or gets usurped by more robust tools.
At my own agency we’ve taken a slightly different approach, snapping together a basic, reusable tool that lets any of our clients turn an offline event into a social one by aggregating Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and even blog content into a real time stream. We’ve also invested time, money and effort to “underwrite” and crowdsource The Next Great Generation, a totally objective blog written by Millennials, offering clients, prospects, and others free insight to what Gen Y thinks when it comes to brands, technology and life in general. The first was relatively easy to create, but the latter admittedly is a lot of work and must itself stand the test of time.
Such must also be the case for Jason Baer’s Social Media Messenger newsletter. Jason finds and shares content that he believes will help his subscribers stay up on topical subjects. By filtering the abundance of social media content into what matters most this AdAge 150 blogger definitely offers a useful service. But again, there’s no shortage of effort required to consistently aggregate and edit a reliable newsletter.
Today, however, my colleague Stuart Foster sent me Chris Brogan’s Delicious bookmark page on social media case studies. Could anything be more obvious? Doh. Brogan has simply bookmarked and tagged every social media case study that he’s ever come across. By making it available to anyone and everyone, Brogan offers a valuable service that requires far less effort than writing the code for an original tool, that’s a lot easier than seeking and synthesizing content around a particular subject, and that’s free from the deadline of a weekly newsletter. He’s simply taken something that he does for himself already and organized it in a way that offers a service to friends, fans, followers and clients.
This is the epitome of social media. It’s not fancy or shiny. It requires little production. It serves the community. I think I’ll simply bookmark all of Chris’s bookmarks and offer them to my clients as an RSS feed. Better yet, maybe I’ll start being way more efficient with my own bookmarking. Let me know what you want me to find. I’ll save it, tag it and share it with you.
Willing to fail, determined to succeed
The plan was to have a discussion about the value of Twitter. Twitter 24. Hashtag TW24. Twenty four minutes, six minutes for each of four topics: Twitter as a way to expand your tribe; Twitter as a means of discovering new and interesting content; Twitter as a marketing medium for brands; Twitter as a crowdsourcing tool.
Each topic would moderated by one of four different people; @malbonnington, @benkunz, @jtwinsor and me. Seemed symmetrical, alliterative, efficient. In concept anyway.
But while Twitter is good for all of the aforementioned, it’s not the best tool for a chat. At least that’s the conclusion of Beancasts’s Bob Knorpp, and AdWeek’s Brian Morrissey, both of whom attempted to participate, and of participant Ben Kunz, who deemed #tw24 an outright failure.
However, what’s interesting, is that even though the intended debate among four, turned into something between chaos and confusion, the exercise did, in fact, prove the initial hypothesis.
I expanded my tribe, meeting the vocal and opinionated Tish Gier.
tishgrier: @MichelleMMM thanks for that info on #TW24. but it looks more like pontificating than conversation. too bad.
tishgrier: @MichelleMMM it’s interesting, but finding a lot more men discussing than women, yet wmn dominate conv. media #tw24
Not to mention Anthony Kalamut, a professor at Seneca College, whom I’ll be hitting up for writers who may want to contribute to The Next Great Generation.
southsideadguy: #tw24 just gave access to a dozen new people to follow and bring new knowledge to my students #MarketingProfs #adeducati
From the stream of comments offered by passersby I discovered new content in the form of an aggregator of B2B blogs just as I’m in the middle of advising a new client on creating their own.
jeremyvictor: #tw24 I am not sure I would have launched http://www.btobbloggers.com without Twitter. It eliminated the need for marketing startup capital
Ben Kunz used the experiment to market his own brand a little bit, turning the “failed” experiment into a post that was subsequently discovered by others.
benkunz: Hive minds: My take on the failed Twitter debate #tw24 – tx @edwardboches, @jtwinsor and @bbhlabs http://tinyurl.com/yce7yr4
KATEBRISTOW: RT @BBHLabs: Here’s @benkunz’s write-up of why the experiment we ran on Twitter yesterday (#tw24) failed – http://tinyurl.com/yce7yr4
And finally, this piece was essentially crowdsourced from the comments in the stream recorded on search.twitter.com.
Some of my favorite comments:
southsideadguy: Twitter has enabled educators like myself to connect a new world of info. Connected to new colleagues. The tribe of ad educators #tw24
uberblond: it’s redefined tribes: tribes aren’t common demos or thinkers, but common topics that unite disparate demos. #tw24
Marc_Meyer: I have maintained for quite some time that the people that I follow on Twitter have become my RSS #tw24
benkunz: Edward – one true story, though. I met @dirkthecow, head of a London PR shop, and he helped by 9-yr-old w homework! #tw24
Jamesbedell: @edwardboches I find jumping into conversations and getting a feel for who the secondary leaders are is a huge step #tw24
benkunz: @jamesbedell – you raise a good point. Sometimes the best ideas come from new “secondary” voices, who aren’t shilling an old formula. #tw24
benkunz: @jtwinsor The mechanics of Twitter itself have been crowdsourced. Retweets. Hashtags. Lists. Users built most of the functions. #tw24
And so, in conclusion,
edwardboches: to those who *tried* to follow #tw24, thanks. we had good intentions 2 do quick 24 min/4 part chat. we won’t give up, we’ll just get better
