In February 2010 Super Bowl XLIV became the most-watched TV program ever, pulling in an average audience of 106.5 million viewers. The big game, the fans and the ads all contributed to a huge event.
But did you know that 2 of the top 5 ads shown during the Super Bowl were crowdsourced by Doritos?
Or that the top ads before and after the Super Bowl — those with the largest viral reach and sustained engagement — were crowdsourced? *
True and true.
Advertising is just the latest industry to find remarkable ways of unlocking the value of crowdsourcing.
Through the last 2 years I’ve seen advertisers experiment with crowdsourcing, find early success and expand how they use crowds in their marketing mix.
And we’ve discovered the following guidelines to maximize the chances of advertisers finding outstanding success with crowdsourcing.
- Fit the process to the brand — How open to participation is the brand? Or, to flip the question, how much control of communications does the brand need? Many brands are consumer-focused and benefit from a totally open creative process. Other brands are business-to-business or subject to regulatory requirements and need a different approach. Match the process to the brand and you’re starting on the right foot.
- Start small and specific — You’re getting your feet wet when you’re starting, so start by dipping your toe in. Define a specific advertising campaign, objective and scope of work. The smaller and better defined, the better chance you have for success.
- Great tools + great people = win! — Once you’ve set yourself up to succeed, success is a matter of combining great tools and great people. Great tools so the process works clearly, quickly and pain-free. Great people because they are the source of ideas and the engines of creativity. And if you’re starting from scratch both tools and people are hard to create and recruit.
- Measure, listen, learn and repeat — Measure effects of your advertising. Listen to feedback from customers, employees and stakeholders. Learn how to apply your lessons to the next phase. Then repeat. It’s not always the best first shot that wins, it’s always the fastest to learn that wins.
When we worked with the team at Crispin Porter + Bogusky on the launch of Microsoft Windows 7 we needed to work to specific launch deadlines and with confidentiality requirements. They wanted a big bang and no leaks. So we fit the process to the desired outcome.
With other clients, we’ve done whole creative campaigns in public, with an open call for contributors, refined to a select group of creators and available creative work throughout the process.
The ads that resulted had feedback and market testing baked in and lived up to our tagline: People-Powered Advertising.
Next up: more.
More different ways for crowdsourcing to improve advertising.
More variations of ads so you stop seeing the same ones over and over and over, etc.
More types of creative work — iPhone apps, social games, digital billboards — to help companies communicate and engage their customers.
Today: we can see how crowdsourcing of advertising has unlocked creativity and led to new approaches, new ideas and new creators finding outlets for their work.
Tomorrow: we can only guess what we’ll see. But it’ll surely be creative and it’ll surely connect people with great creators and creative work.
* AdAge article Doritos, Google, Super Bowl Ads Storm Chart
James Sherrett is the founder and CEO of AdHack — the marketplace for ad creative. In past lives he wrote a novel entitled Up in Ontario and guided fishermen. Now he connects brands and ad agencies to the world’s top on-demand creative department: 500+ strong in 18+ countries, working in all media types: TV, web, video, print, games and more.
“Fit the process to the brand” – Great stuff!
James – You have found a new fan
)
I do wonder though if crowd-sourcing wouldn’t be better served by being as open, as inclusive, and as participatory as possible (if nothing, but only for the potential diversity of ideas)? How about engaging contributors with subliminal incentives, and social gaming elements (time permitting of course)?
Cheers,
Prince
Hey Prince, thanks for the kind words.
Our approach on AdHack is to open the full process of crowdsourcing ad creative.
But at the same time we also understand when clients need confidentiality or a curated crowd to work on their project, and we have tools built into AdHack to make that happen.
I like you suggested about social gaming elements. We’ve talked about including those incentive before and we’ve started to include some, like badges for accomplishments.
Any other specific ideas? Would love to hear them.
[...] read it all: Crowdsourcing Advertising: 4 Key Rules for Creativity On Demand. addthis_url = [...]
Nice article, James & Chaordix. You may be familiar with Zooppa.com, a turnkey platform for advertising competitions with a community of creatives and consumers (56,000 and growing) and full-service management and promotions of these efforts.
We tend to evangelize the open-participation model, because it allows for more opportunities for engagement, and a much broader range of ideas and conversations. In this age of transparency and the two-way conversation it seems to follow suit as well, and allows the brand and our community to help creatives improve their work before the final judging process.
Like AdHack, we also offer the closed-campaign version, if the brand in question is releasing a new product or launching a promotion that they don’t want competitors to see. I wonder if there will continue to be a duality to it, I imagine yes.
Crowdsourcing in advertising can really go a long way. Recently i have seen a site misikpitch.com that crowdsources music.
Crowdsourcing can even be used in video footages. But generally things that take more time to make are not suitable candidates for crowdsourcing. A logo or a banner takes little time to make and hence are suitable for attracting mass contributors. Crowdsourcing will only be successful in those areas where little efforts can get you results. This is because no one will be willing to make something creative spending 7 or 8 days for which he might not get paid at all.
The closed campaign version implemented by AdHACK is great to maintain secrecy.