Crowdsourcing grows in popularity and why the trend is here to stay
It was only nine months ago when I moderated my first crowdsourcing session, interviewing John Winsor, then of CP&B, now of Victors and Spoils for the Ad Club of Boston. But it already seems like ancient history. In that conversation we were basically explaining what crowdsourcing was and fending off challenges and concerns from a community that was interested more out of fear than a desire to embrace it.
Would crowdsourcing devalue creative, put people out of work, and replace high quality work with the mediocrity of amateurs?
Fast forward to now. If you listen to the likes of James DeJulio, CEO of Tongal; Mark Walsh, CEO of Genius Rocket, James Sherrett the founder of AdHack, and John Winsor, the inspiration behind Victors and Spoils – just four of the dozens of crowdsourcing companies that have sprung up in the last couple of years – crowdsourcing is a growth industry. More and more marketers and brands are exploring its potential.
In some cases they genuinely believe they can find something new, fresh, interesting and unexpected. In other cases, according to John Winsor, they’re escaping agencies they find arrogant, hard to work with, or unwilling to bring to the table a wide enough range of work to convince a client that all the options have been explored. In every case, the clients embracing this approach feel as if it brings them closer to their customer community and provides them insights they wouldn’t otherwise discover.
For short change and low risk, clients can buy:
1. More ideas
2. Better insights
3. Raw intelligence
Right behind them comes the crowd. Talented creative people employed full-time along with freelancers and the unemployed have joined the communities of creators being sourced by the likes of Victors and Spoils and Genius Rocket. Hundreds of undiscovered, aspiring filmmakers have signed on with Tongal. And thousands of recent graduates and wannabes welcome an opportunity to gain experience, produce ideas for their books, and (from the more reputable platforms anyway) receive useful feedback even if they don’t win or earn any financial reward.
There are still plenty of critics. And it’s not without its challenges. But it appears this train has left the station and there’s a platform of people waiting for the next one and the one after that.
Take a listen to this Chaordix panel I moderated last week with the folks mentioned above. They conversation has definitely moved from whether or not crowdsourcing is a good idea in the advertising space to how marketers and agencies make it work.
Photo by: opensourceway
Comments
An agency team are paid salaries to come up with ideas.
When it's speculative (regardless of fairness) you know there's a genuine interest in the subject from that individual who participates.
The thing is the true open model is good for certain situations like mass insight and product development but in a creative sense I agree with Ben and Len there are substantial ethical issues. If something is a black hole for ideas how good will those ideas ever be?
To retain fairness and uphold creative excellence why not go for a hybrid. Take the old agency good points and merge with a remote network of amazing creators and thinkers, bit from loads of backgrounds.
It doesn't have to be one or the other. There are middle grounds too.
And it's not just about numbers which too many seem to get hung up on.
It's about the horizontal cross fertilization of ideas from very different skill sets which would not happen in a trad agency setup.
.-= Sam Reidu00c2u00b4s last blog ..Enigmatica =-.
Edward,
Cool post and I agree with you, crowdsourcing is here to stay.
To my mind, the best defense of crowdsourcing is that people can choose to participate or not. I don't think there is a truly great universal argument against it, but I do object to the methods of certain practitioners, especially Victors and Spoils.
When V&S first launched, they made all kinds of promises, but the biggest was the imminent announcement of an innovative compensation practice that evolved the "work for hire" model, which V&S was using at launch. Oh, and they were going to crowdsource this great model. Never happened. Worse, there was no public debate I ever saw about achieving this new model.
Then V&S launched its crowdsourced logo, which is a trainwreck, and exactly what you would expect from a committee.
Other promises by V&S were to revamp its site (crowdsourced, of course), blog constantly in a communal way (lots of interaction), and, um, there was other stuff, but I can't remember.
And, now that I think about it, this is the weakness of the crowdsourced model: accountability. Since no one is investing too much (not the client, not the agency, not the crowd), no one is risking much, so no one cares overly much about credit or blame or whether things work, fail or wither.
Here's the question: What would Steve Jobs do? He sure as hell wouldn't call in a crowd at first. First, he would figure out his idea, craft his vision into simple, inspiring language, build something insanely great, then MAYBE call in the crowd to make it even greater.
Jeff
.-= Jeff Shattucku00c2u00b4s last blog ..The paradox of the red sailboat. =-.
If we were all Steve Jobs and or could hire them, we wouldn't need either the discussion or the concept. On the V & S front, I am under the impression they are busy, getting good assignments, and paying if you play. I am visiting them next week. Will share more.
Steve Jobs outsources plenty of commodity stuff. Whether you think of ad creative as a commodity or not depends on where your paycheck comes from
.-= Jeremy Morrisu00c2u00b4s last blog ..Social Is Useless If You Have Nothing To Say =-.
My check comes from having ideas, thinking of ways to spread them, and inspiring others to have them. And I still think that creativity is a commodity. Not everyone is equal, and some possess remarkable and rare talent, but at the same time, anyone can have a great idea. And in an age where we all go around with flips, digital cameras and have grown up generating content, chances are there are more good creators among us than we imagine. Yes, design, great writing, art direction, etc. are learned and mastered skills, but who's to say some participant in a crowdsourcing project won't have the killer idea?
Edward, good point. Crowdsourcing could indeed lead to a killer idea. And if you're in charge, I bet that idea would be spotted and get developed. Which raises another interesting point about the crowd model: you still need a leader!
Jeff
.-= Jeff Shattucku00c2u00b4s last blog ..The paradox of the red sailboat. =-.
Edward and Jeff I think you're both exactly right - which is why crowdsourcing is probably inevitable in creative services and why strategist/leader types will always be in demand and difficult to outsource to Asia! The question wily entrepreneurs should ponder is: do the early crowdsourcing movers have the right model? And if not, what might that look like? Masybe we should take this conversation offline LOL
.-= Jeremy Morrisu00c2u00b4s last blog ..Social Is Useless If You Have Nothing To Say =-.
Ben,
Crowdsourcing isn't perfectly efficient, it's just more efficient. It requires a decent amount of creative and man hours. So, you still need to "employ" people--just less people. The most drastic change will be related to the nature of "what" those people do.
As to the belabored point about fairness. I think that what no one wants to recognize is that all crowdsourcing models (good or bad) are making the work available to people who want the work. A lot of times they've been shut out of work in the past, which to me, is a worse alternative than being paid less for the work. We could sit around and try and extrapolate what will happen in some dystopian society where I crowdsource my cup of coffee in the morning, and what effect that will have on the labor market, but that's just not realistic. What is realistic is that crowdsourcing is opening up the creative process and enabling a meritocracy. People who are talented and want to be paid for creative work, are now being compensated.
There's an insatiable demand for content on the horizon. Who's going to deliver all those videos, games and interfaces to the iPad? Consumers have spoken and they want new content, on demand and cheap (if not free). The old way of generating content is just too complex to meet this demand--as Clay Shirky put it in this incredibly lucid blog post: http://bit.ly/dad3MZ
So, we'll all have to adapt to some sort of a new workforce paradigm to do this--I suppose that's going to be a crowdsourcing model. One thing I keep thinking about is that if the old model actually worked efficiently, the train (as Edward puts it) would never have left the station.
Lower costs to produce content plus an insatiable demand for new content will mean more work. Maybe the price goes down, but more people are working in the long run.
I agree with you James - If it isn't fair it's the person's choice to decide that before they get involved, but the 'crowd' has to be relative to the output required. So as you say, lots of content generators for lots of content required. However is this better than a few really good ones if that content is easily accessible?
What needs to be considered is that crowdsourcing is not a 'one-size-fits-all' / all or nothing method.
There are lots of ways to take certain principles and apply them to other systems as required as per the task.
.-= Sam Reidu00c2u00b4s last blog ..Enigmatica =-.
An agency team are paid salaries to come up with ideas.
When it's speculative (regardless of fairness) you know there's a genuine interest in the subject from that individual who participates.
The thing is the true open model is good for certain situations like mass insight and product development but in a creative sense I agree with Ben and Len there are substantial ethical issues. If something is a black hole for ideas how good will those ideas ever be?
To retain fairness and uphold creative excellence why not go for a hybrid. Take the old agency good points and merge with a remote network of amazing creators and thinkers, bit from loads of backgrounds.
It doesn't have to be one or the other. There are middle grounds too.
And it's not just about numbers which too many seem to get hung up on.
It's about the horizontal cross fertilization of ideas from very different skill sets which would not happen in a trad agency setup.
.-= Sam Reidu00c2u00b4s last blog ..Enigmatica =-.
When it comes to business models incorporating crowdsourcing, I believe the one aspect missing from the current equation is stake.
Putting aside the ethics of the crowdsourcing model (a futile argument in my mind) the key difference between insourcing and out(crowd)sourcing is stake in the final product. An individual creates something that then becomes one tooth on a much larger gear with few ties to the overall project after handing over they just finished working on.
If I had the talent or time to participate in crowdsourced projects and was paid in the equivalent of stock ownership for a company, I would work 10 times harder to make idea the best it could be. It wouldn't be a creation I was building to add to my dusty portfolio of work, it would be something that I would watch for the rest of my life AND go out of my way to promote on my own.
I remain torn by this, yes, unstoppable trend. While the value of crowdsourcing to marketers is obvious, it does feel like we're losing something -- extraordinary efficiencies in any economic platform end up devaluing the work. Efficiency is pushing wages to zero.
Here's a thought experiment: Imagine you could build the perfectly efficient crowdsourcing platform to replace *all* of your business's current full-time employees. That's right. You fire everyone and start over with competitions for each job slot. For each position, you post a weekly prize, and every week 10,000 people provide spec work to complete the tasks of each prior individual worker. (Thanks to your magically efficient platform, each contestant has all the training they need to fluidly pick up the task from last week's winner.) Instead of paying any single employee $1,500 a week, you now award the winning entry $150. Because people are hungry for work, you have no trouble producing enough entries to find quality winning submissions. You have successfully reduced your payroll by 90%. Because of the competitive nature, you've improved the quality output of each job function. And next week, you start over.
Fair?
If not, why is this scenario any less fair than current crowdsourcing competitions that pay a fraction to winners and ask others to provide spec work for zero payment? If people are willing to participate, and marketers are willing to fund it, then what is the inherent problem?
If you step back, you'll see the issue -- treating human capital like super efficient data points can build new efficiency in any production model, but there is more to the equation that optimizing inputs and outputs. There is a level of fair human reward that, yes, provides friction in business but should not be lost.
I'm interested in your response, Edward. And if you don't like my thought experiment above, why, we're just debating a matter of scale.
.-= Ben Kunzu00c2u00b4s last blog ..The Yelp transparency mistake =-.
Hey Ben, good comment and thought experiment.
What we've found in practice is that companies engaged in crowdsourcing have to ensure their creative community is paid for its work and paid properly.
If you look at all the emerging leaders in crowdsourcing platforms -- AdHack, Tongal, GeniusRocket -- we've all moved to a more nuanced and balanced model where the creative process is graduated.
Start with a big crowd of creators, winnow that down to smaller groups through the process, pay people commensurate with their contribution.
Buyers still get the benefits Edward mentions above -- more ideas, better insights, raw intelligence -- and creators aren't subject to digital sharecropping (HT: Nick Carr).
Are the current models perfect? Nope.
But we're refining them all the time to improve the benefits for both buyers *and* creators. Because the model has to work for creators to be sustainable.
.-= Jamesu00c2u00b4s last blog ..Crowdsourcing Advertising Creative Panel Discussion on March 31st: Register Now =-.
Ben:
First, note that I am an advocate as much or more in principle as in practice. So far we have crowdsourced more to generate additional content and to propagate ideas rather than to replace people or work done in house. Though I am interested in doing more of it, again, however, not to replace people, but to expand the pool of talent available to us and to, perhaps, replace the high price of freelance talent, from whom you sometimes get slim results that never get used but that cost you a lot in time (to manage) and money (guaranteed regardless of outcome.)
So, my answer to your suggestion is that I would never do what you suggest; it's a moot example given how I hope or plan (or have so far) used crowdsourcing.
Furthermore, I'm not sure that the best talent ever *needs* to work this way; they will always have paid or freelance gigs. But they, along with aspiring creators appear to actually *want* to work this way. It's extra cash on the side, the chance to work on something different (category or product), or simply an experiment to see how good they are and if they can prevail.
What's interesting to me is that nine months ago there was a lot of debate: should we shouldn't we; will it won't it; fair or unfair. Now it appears that people on both sides (marketer and creator) have simply embraced it. Doesn't that say something?
I'll take a stab at answering Ben's thought experiment. Every company is in the business of maximizing profit. Some functions are easier to automate or outsource than others. The very fact that companies use agencies for marketing purposes is evidence of this. The crowdsourcing philosophy merely takes this a step further. If a company can source comparable marketing and advertising materials for 1/10th or 1/100th of the price of hiring an agency, they'll do it. It's inevitable.
As for the question about eliminating all employees, they'd do that too...if it was possible. The downsizing of companies, wholesale shift of the US manufacturing base to Asia and 20 years of massive IT infrastructure investments all point to a future paradigm of less bodies/lower costs.
Right now we're not (yet) at that point. Plenty of business functions are still performed better by highly trained, long-term employees. But for sure the list is shrinking. The type of ecosystem development that the agencies described in Edward's post are engaged in is absolutely the wave of the future. And not just in marketing.
.-= Jeremy Morrisu00c2u00b4s last blog ..Social Is Useless If You Have Nothing To Say =-.
And if anyone wanted to follow the accompanying conversation on Twitter, here's the hash tag for the panel discussion #cspanel, where we answered follow-on questions:
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23cspanel
.-= Jamesu00c2u00b4s last blog ..Crowdsourcing Advertising Creative Panel Discussion on March 31st: Register Now =-.
My check comes from having ideas, thinking of ways to spread them, and inspiring others to have them. And I still think that creativity is a commodity. Not everyone is equal, and some possess remarkable and rare talent, but at the same time, anyone can have a great idea. And in an age where we all go around with flips, digital cameras and have grown up generating content, chances are there are more good creators among us than we imagine. Yes, design, great writing, art direction, etc. are learned and mastered skills, but who's to say some participant in a crowdsourcing project won't have the killer idea?
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