Originally posted at Blogging Innovation on June 17th, 2010

3GTV is the brainchild of Automated Media Services, and they are putting little screens in stores right next to products they promote and show commercials for those products. The notion of having what amounts to a tiny TV screen next to the Kraft Macaroni & Cheese would have sounded bizarre 20 years ago, not just because of cost, more because we didn’t think of TV screens being in very many places. Screens are everywhere today (mostly because of the low cost) and so we are less surprised to see them at restaurants and in elevators, etc.

As it stands, the 3GTV service that’s set to launch later in the year is a huge breakthrough because it’s really the first time consumers are TV-pitched at the very moment they are deciding which product to buy, the so-called “moment of truth” and the bottom of the sales funnel. So stores and manufacturers and advertisers will get real time data about the impact, which will probably be at least worth the trouble for the advertisers. So that in and of itself is a big deal and that’s why Stuart Elliott wrote Showing TV, and Commercials, on the Shelves and in the Aisles in The New York Times today.

But I think this is a much bigger deal than that because I think 3GTV is going to end up being the gateway to some much cooler stuff, tapping into the great rethinking that alice.com has done, but also making social networking sites like Foursquare much more interesting as a business. Currently Foursquare makes me want to utter something that’s more likely to come out of the mouth of Rahm Emanuel (and then offend Sarah Palin) because it really doesn’t let you do anything useful.

As Alice.com has figured out, most manufacturers don’t care to learn our names. Just knowing our age, gender, and ZIP code is what they want to know so that they can get more targeted in their marketing and product R&D. People using sites like Foursquare allow you to “check in” to a location and not that much else, but if you can now marry that information in real time with the 3GTV, then next step in the techno-evolutionary chain is that Kraft is going to know that (if it’s me) a 44 year-old male from the 98144 ZIP code just entered the store and they will know in my case that I don’t ever buy macaroni & cheese so I am not a very good target, but the next person to check in happens to buy it a lot, then Kraft (or the store) may want to flash a coupon on the screen that that consumer can “pick up” with an app on their iPhone (I could pick it up too if I saw it, but I would ignore it), or the coupon can be sent to their mobile phone (still all anonymous – PayPal figured that out). Then at checkout all of that gets reconciled (that isn’t elegant today, but I am sure someone is already hard at work writing that software).

Personalized, location-based advertising and coupon-ing is coming soon, and every shop from Safeway to Shultzy’s Sausage stand will benefit. Helping the big guys is interesting, but to be able to scale down to the mom and pop shops is where this starts to become gigantic. For the big guys, it allows them to more actively manage their inventory. If they know the ad or the coupon is going to lift sales of a given product, they know when to stock more of it. Even bigger, when inventory is time-sensitive, Shultzy’s may have pre-cooked 20 hot dogs for lunch, and as the lunch hour winds down, they still have nine left, they can push out coupons for the last ones to people walking by (that gets beyond Foursquare’s store idea, but it should also be easy to check in to a neighborhood). At the point if the alternative to not selling them is throwing them away due to spoilage, then Shultzy’s might send coupons for a free hot dog knowing that they will at least probably sell a soft drink and get some money. The same spoilage issue works really well for grocery stores when produce and meats are getting to the end of their shelf life. Really powerful.

Now things are really cooking with connecting marketers with consumers once we get this rolling. My guess is that Groupon, the ridiculously (their word, kind of) successful coupon company that just closed a $135 million round of financing will be in the mix. Add them to the list of “I wish I had thought of that!”

Great marketing innovation that will lead to even bigger ones.

We hosted a panel of smart people this morning. It was an hour of smart discussion that started out with Edward Boches commenting that “The crowd wants to play, why not embrace them?”  Then got right in to why crowdsourcing continues to be such a big topic.

James DeJulio, from Tongal said that it is still in the spotlight because tt’s feasible for everyone to creative and make content now, for cheap.  At the same time, the economy has a lot to do with it, business are looking for a better way to spend their money. Social media has given people the opportunity to collect a wide group of fans – why not give them something to do? It seems like a positive for both the business and client side.

John Winsor, from Victors & Spoils added that there’s a feeling that when a traditional agency brings new ideas to the table, there aren’t many ideas. Companies these days want more creative ideas and a closer relationship with the people coming up with those ideas. With crowdsourcing, not only are they getting creative, they are also getting research at the same time. Also, traditional agency relationship clients are becoming uncomfortable with that. They want more radical transparency than they currently have.

Edward’s summary of the three things were  more ideas, closer to the community and definitely cost savings. Peter LaMotte, from Genius Rocket added that it is also diversity of concepts and affordability.

Edward’s next questions were about the benefits of analytics and the knowledge insight and intelligence that comes along with crowdsourcing.

Peter said that tapping into a community really brings a diverse set of input to clients that can actually provide insight into their brands that you wouldn’t get from an agency. With crowdsourcing, from the front and on the back end, you are able to capture much more info than ever before.

Edward noted that what fascinated him when he did a project with Tongal was it was like getting back qualitative research along with creative, which is valuable.

James DeJulio,  Yes, the more places you can get people to participate and the more types of people you can get to participate, the more you get back real interpretations of your brand. He added a great analogy about how people view your brand and how you expect them to view your brand – sometimes what people want and what people say they want is different, “If you hate Duke, but think they are going to make it into the final four, you are going to put it in your top picks.”

When Edward asked if there were any conflicts to people embracing crowdsourcing as a way of working John Winsor chimed in and said he thinks it will be interesting to see what agencies do. Will they try and lockdown talent with more non-compete type things? There’s no answer to this. However,  Mark Walsh said what they’re seeing in the Genius Rocket community is that a lot of people in the creative agencies have realized that they are their own brand. They need to cultivate and promote that brand (themselves) more than they have in the past.

Edward Boches said as an employer, when he hires young people now, they all have outside interests. They pretty much insist that if you try and deny their interests in these other areas, they won’t work with you. The whole crowdsourcing model could affect the relationships people have with their employers.

The panel wrapped up with some words of wisdom from each panelist

James Sherrett AdHack – What you are looking for has to be key to the objective. Try it out on a low risk, small project, figure it out fast and iterate.

James DeJulio Tongal – First, commitment as an organization, Get behind it. Second,  a leap of faith that it is going to work, because it will work.

John Winsor Victors & Spoils – Break down silos. Connection and integration between product and marketing within your company is key.

Mark Walsh Genius Rocket – Start small with an orphan brand, so you are willing to try new stuff on. Those who ignore where crowdsourcing is taking the relationship between a brand and its customers are looking for trouble. Customers today are so drenched in interactivity and transparency, you have to respond to that, it is no longer an option.

It doesn’t mean that crowdsourcing is the enemy of ad agencies. We all want to play nice together. We’re just a new tactic in a toolbox that is coming along like a freight train.

Edward Boches Mullen – I look at one thing only: How consumers behave, interact and use content, community and the tools that are out there. The consumer has already decided. They are creating content. Any brand or marketer that doesn’t take advantage of that in a way that will work for them is crazy.

note: you can listen to the full hour panel here: Advertising and the Crowd Invasion – recorded audio

Crowdsourcing is as much about the process and the theater of creation as the output.  Maybe even more so.  A lot of my job is to explain to our clients that not only is the content we produce incredibly valuable (that’s easy to understand) but the engagement, participation, sharing, and all the other intangible (an important) benefits of crowdsourcing are what you’re paying for?  If no one can understand it’s value, then how do we charge for it?

Indulge me in a Chuck Klosterman-esque fantasy for a second…

INT.  INDUSTRIAL BROOKLYN, NY OFFICE BUILDING

This doesn’t really look or feel like an office, but it must be because there are a lot of people working here.  “The Hold Steady” is playing over a house PA or Muzak system.  There’s an overwhelming concentration of Apple products, exposed brick, exposed heat ducts, exposed electrical outlets–a lot of exposed shit…

JAMES DEJULIO (30s, Italian-ish) has a room of hipster looking (boat shoes, rock tees, tight jeans, ironic moustaches, etc.) forward thinking BRAND EXECUTIVES captivated after demo-ing the Tongal Platform.

EXECUTIVE #1

This is really cool. Brilliant model.  I really think we can make this work.

EXECUTIVE #2

How many videos do you think we’ll get?

DEJULIO

Depends.  50.  100 maybe.

EXECUTIVE #2

Really? And people all over the world are going to create these…for us?

DEJULIO

Yeah, if we do it right.

EXECUTIVE #1

Ok.  If this program produces 50 decent user generated ads for us and we’ve paid out

$10,000..that’s pretty good.

EXECUTIVE #1

That’s rad—and no one in this room is going to lose their jobs over that.  Right Julian?

(beat)

Julian?

Executive #2, not paying attention is texting on his iPhone.

EXECUTIVE #2

Oh, sorry, I just saw a tweet that the Kogi truck is outside.

EXECUTIVE #1

Ok.  Let’s do this.

DEJULIO

Hey that’s really great guys, I love early adopters.

DeJulio, ready to bust out the Tongal green-colored business Amex and take his new clients out for some over priced Micro Brews goes in for a high five…no reaction.  A long beat.  EXECUTIVE #1 whispers into EXECUTIVE #2′s ear.   EXECUTIVE #2 nods, breaks up the action.

EXECUTIVE #2

Hang on, what’s your CPM?

EXECUTIVE #1

How many users do you have?

EXECUTIVE #2

Is it comparable to Facebook?  What about traffic?

DEJULIO (to self)

Christ.

(to group)

Why does that still matter?

It’s easy to measure (and charge) for impressions.  But what are those impressions really worth?  I think the reason that a lot of people fail to wrap their heads around the value of crowdsourcing (and other forms of social media) is that there’s no metric for it yet.  Do social media companies need a rating agency?  What characteristics would justify a AAA rating for a social media platform?

Before we can even entertain that idea, businesses need to begin to assess a real value to what engagement and total brand immersion are worth.  They need to understand that if a 1,000 people completely engaged will always be more valuable than 100,000 people who aren’t paying attention.

Pretty bold statement, but why do I think it’s especially accurate for a creative, well-designed and executed crowdsourcing campaign?

For example, if there’s a crowdsourcing project on Tongal to create a 30 second spot and a member of the community opts into spending an afternoon thinking about a concept for a commercial for your product-maybe even researching your product and asking his or her friends for their input–then distills that down to 140 characters and submits it to a Tongal campaign, what’s that worth?  What’s that dialogue worth?  What’s it worth compared to 100,000 people fast forwarding through your ad on DVR? Or, flipping right past it in a magazine while getting a whiff of some terrible cologne?

What about when that user comes back in a week and opts-in to gathering a group of friends to spend a weekend creating a video for your product? He has to enlist help, he has to call in favors, he has to spend a few hours editing the film.  When the film is completed, he’ll begin sharing it with the friends who helped him, his mom, and their moms-because they’re all proud of it-and what’s just magically happened is that all of these people have become emotionally vested in your product.  (pssst-you may also have a fantastic piece of work which you now have the option to purchase)

The interesting thing is that the user has chosen to do this.  He’s having fun.  He either had a previous affinity for your product or service, or he just discovered it and he likes it.  Especially, he likes you because you’re letting him in the door by giving him a chance to do something he enjoys and your product is the catalyst.

How can you compare that to a banner ad?

James deJulio is the President and Co-founder of Tongal. He is a partner in Half Shell Entertainment and formerly Vice President of The Robert Evans Company at Paramount Pictures. In mid-2008, disillusioned with the inefficient, bureaucratic manner in which films were being developed, produced and financed, he decided to “shake things up a bit”. He began exploring with Jack Hughes ways in which the TopCoder thinking could be applied to creating filmed content.

If you’d like to hear more from him, join us on Wednesday at 11am EST for an online discussion about advertising and the crowd invasion.

Crowdsourcing can be controversial. Nowhere is the debate more lively than in the world of advertising where who best to generate creative, who decides what is great, and how everyone involved should get paid is all up in the air. Join us March 31st, as we host a panel of industry experts from Victors & Spoils, AdHack, GeniusRocket, and Tongal to discuss some very different perspectives and approaches on crowdsourcing in advertising.

Join the live panel debate on crowdsourcing in the creative realm

When: Wednesday, Mar 31st, 11am to noon EST
What: Free online panelist discussion
Who: Peter Lamotte, Genius Rocket; James Sherrett, AdHack; James DeJulio, Tongal; John WInsor, Victors & Spoils. Moderated by Edward Boches, Mullen.

Questions we’ll try to tackle:

• Does crowdsourcing in advertising need to involve “spec work”?
• Is crowdsourcing about saving money? If it isn’t, what is it for?
• What does the future of work look like for creative professionals, and for creative amateurs?
• Will the ad agencies of yesterday hold the same prowess tomorrow?
• How do we best include customers in brands they are passionate about?
• What’s it take to make crowdsourcing work for marketing?

Learn more and register to attend here: http://www.chaordix.com/advertising-and-the-crowd-invasion

Check out this short video for a primer on crowdsourcing and the world of advertising. While down at SxSW Sarah had the opportunity to have a chat with Peter Lamotte and John Winsor.

]]> http://www.chaordix.com/2010/03/advertising-and-the-crowd-invasion-online-panel-march-31st/feed/ 0 http://www.chaordix.com/2010/03/crowdsourcing-advertising-4-key-rules-for-creativity-on-demand/ http://www.chaordix.com/2010/03/crowdsourcing-advertising-4-key-rules-for-creativity-on-demand/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:19:15 +0000 James Sherrett http://www.chaordix.com/blog/?p=687

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.

I think it is safe to say that Big Rock Brewery is Calgary’s favorite beer. Since the start, its customers have been its biggest promoters. Long before it became known as crowdsourcing, Big Rock thought up creative ways to involve those promoters in its brand. The brewery does a great job of managing its crowdsourced campaigns so both the brand and customers win. I think one of the reasons it continues to be successful is Big Rock is heavily involved in the local community. They promote local arts and culture events and even host their own lecture series. Their VP of corporate and community affairs, Jim Button, wrote about how the Big Rock Eddies came about – and why people still love it going into its 17^th year!

Would you pay $100 to watch commercials while sampling the product being advertised?

Jim Button

I’m sure Ed McNally, Founder Big Rock Brewery, had no idea back in 1993 that he was participating in a powerful tool called Crowdsourcing.  Really, he was simply having some fun with the customers that love his brand while saving himself some money.

What Ed knew was that his small regional craft brewery couldn’t afford the high price of traditional advertising. Even if he could, he wasn’t interested in following suit and doing what the large industrial breweries were doing. He knew PR was much more powerful than traditional advertising in creating a meaningful relationship for a product that had a short history and relatively small market share.

So, take his Scottish background, and combine it with his desire to create a relationship with beer drinkers and you have The Big Rock Eddies Beer Commercial Contest. Instead of hiring an agency and booking expensive media time to create awareness, Ed simply asked his beer drinkers to create beer commercials for him. After all, who would be better at selling than the people that already loved the beer?  And really, what could be more fun than drinking beer and watching a bunch of funny beer commercials.

17 years and thousands of videos later, the Eddies have become a much sought after trophy and equally sought after event ticket. Every year tickets for the annual fundraiser sell out in the first day, over $60,000 is raised for charity and everyone walks away happy. Imagine that, close to 2,000 people attending a party and paying $100 a ticket to sample your beer while watching your beer commercials. Crazy.

Innovation comes from listening AND interpreting what you hear. Traditionally, companies decide internally what to produce and offer it to customers. But there’s a market shift underway led by Dell, Converse, Amazon and others using crowdsourcing to ask customers what they want to buy before they build it.

WIND Mobile launched with an ad campaign that promised to put them in the same league as market driven innovators. On their website, they ask people join the conversation asking about what customers want, how they feel about contracts and their thoughts on fees. We were expectantly waiting for them to launch something DIFFERENT but it seems they’ve delivered a slight twist on a broken monetization model, instead of paying for your handset over the course of your contract, you purchase it up front.

If WIND Mobile was truly having a conversation with their customers, they would have come up with a better solution. It’s clear customers don’t want to pay as much as they currently do, whether it is up front, or over a three year contract. Customers see that mobile users in other countries pay far less than we do here in Canada. If we assume there is a good reason for this, shouldn’t mobile companies being trying to discover innovative profitable solutions that will save customers money as well?

I’m worried about WIND Mobile’s brand strategy for three reasons. First, they seem to be offering the same thing as everyone else, just packaged around “being nice” and listening. Second, they are creating a work-around for the industry, not innovating new solutions. Last, if their strategy doesn’t work, other companies interested in involving their customers in the innovation process will have one more failed example to deter them. It is kind of disappointing when what is possible with crowdsourcing could be so much more.

Last week, Chaordix sponsored the Boston Ad Club’s “All About Crowdsourcing” event, where I was honored to meet and introduce the two speakers John Winsor and Edward Boches – both very highly regarded thought leaders in the innovation space.  Edward hosted a lively session in one-on-one format with John providing commentary before turning to the crowd for Q+A.    Kudos to the Ad Club for running a great event with live #adclub Twitter-feeds to the monitors all around the room and quick switching to any sites the speakers mentioned.

It was an enlightening event for me in many ways.   First, I was surprised that many of the people I spoke with seemed to have little or no understanding of what crowdsourcing is all about.  This is despite the majority of them coming from advertising and creative firms.  I guess crowdsourcing isn’t quite as close to mainstream as I thought.  Second, while the crowd posed lots of the typical questions we hear daily – How do you build your crowd?  How much does it cost?  What’s the ROI?  -  the longest discussion was about the perceived threat that crowdsourcing could essentially outsource creative jobs- i.e. many of the jobs represented in the room.

Certainly any new technology that has landscape-changing capacity such as crowdsourcing will be a double-edged sword of sorts – it won’t be positive for everyone, but the benefits so greatly outweigh the negatives that there isn’t any question where its heading.At the event, Edward said “crowdsourcing is here to stay” and I agree.

While sites like iStockphoto and crowdSpring are making some professional photographers and designers change their business models, their benefits to the market as a whole are tremendous and they are giving thousands of small shop photographers and designers instant exposure and credibility. Plus, there are far more companies using crowdsourcing as a better, faster, more economical way to gain innovation, market input, feedback and prediction, than there are creating sites that might threaten jobs.

In fact, I’ll go all the way to say that to the “professional creative” crowd – crowdsourcing may soon become one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal.   What better way to test market reaction and acceptance some of the new creative ideas you are coming up with prior to spending hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars of your client’s media budget?

So let’s stop focusing on “design contests” that seem like hours of work for nothing. Instead, let’s focus on the opportunity for the advertising and creative community to find a way to invite the crowd in to their business that produces market relevant brands, faster and more economically but ensures that everyone involved is being rewarded.