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.