Who says your best ideas have to come from the inside?
Community Guest Blog post by By Chad McCloud
This year’s Super Bowl might just be remembered as much for the crowd than the game itself, and not because of a packed stadium in Dallas. The crowd is now providing the spark for what might just be your favorite Super Bowl commercial. The E*Trade baby who ditched his high-priced broker has engaged Social Media dynamo Poptent to crowdsource concepts for the “best advertising imaginable”, according to E*Trade’s CMO. Poptent has received 250 submissions from videographers all over the world who want to create their Next Big Commercial, giving E*Trade a ton of creative ideas to choose from. Frito-Lay has also launched a major crowdsourcing campaign for their Doritos and Pepsi Max commercials, and are offering big bucks to undiscovered creative geniuses who might just be that accountant who lives next door.
Crowdsourcing has come into its own in the advertising space, and not just for the reasons you might think. To be sure, E*Trade and Doritos are looking beyond their traditional ad agencies for the best ideas. But they’re also tapping into a phenomenon that is evolving how people think about brands – customer engagement.
The American Idol TV show received over 600 million votes in its past season, and is one of the most popular shows in the history of American television. An estimated 15 million people play fantasy football, and the NFL is the most popular sport in America. It’s not a stretch to say that customers feel a deeper connection to a product or service when they become active participants. Here’s where E*Trade and Doritos get it right – their brand is shifting from a one-way provider of chips and stock trades to an interactive relationship with their customer base.
So what does this mean for B2B companies? We see two opportunities where companies can harness the ideas of the crowd and create more personalized engagement: product innovation and customer experience.
Today, crowdsourcing has the most impact for B2B companies when it’s used for generating innovative ideas. The crowd (or customers in the B2B space) intimately use a company’s product or service and has insightful ideas about ways to improve them. The crowd also has pointed opinions on the experience with the company itself, based at least on the experiences they have with world-class brands from a wide range of industries. Crowdsourcing for B2B companies can be best leveraged as an engine for generating the best ideas imaginable in the evolving interfaces between customer and company.
As B2B companies dip their toes into the crowdsourcing water, here are five ways to get the most out of the initiative:
1) INCLUDE THE ENTIRE CROWD. The first step most companies take before engaging with customers is to target the ones who are the biggest, most important, or most desirable. Crowdsourcing works best when the entire crowd is engaged – the most innovative and productive ideas are just as likely to come from the most unlikely sources.
2) ENGAGE THE CROWD AT WHAT IT DOES BEST. Poptent is highly successful in generating innovative content, but the company won’t replace CMOs or ad agencies in the process. A clear vision of the brand message and a well-defined customer strategy become more critical as the number of ideas increase. Engage the crowd by casting a wide creative net, but leave the decision-making to those who are spending the money.
3) MOTIVATE THE CROWD. There are few companies who inspire customers to give them sweat equity purely out of brand love. Doritos has turned their crowdsourcing effort into a customer-engagement campaign, and is offering $1 million if one of their customers creates a commercial concept that ranks #1 on the ad meter. Poptent is paying out $15k and $10k to the winner and runners-up respectively. Find a way to provide incentives that your customers will find valuable.
4) TREAT CROWDSOURCING LIKE A CAMPAIGN. Crowdsourcing is only as valuable as the size and intensity of the crowd. The best crowdsourcing initiatives are well-communicated and ‘sell’ the idea – a product team and marketing team working jointly can drive large volumes of innovative ideas (which the Product team likes) and drive deeper customer engagement (which Marketing loves).
5) BE READY TO PRIORITIZE AND EXECUTE. A crowdsourcing campaign done right will elicit a large number of ideas from a wide range of customers. Critical thinking is required to determine the ideas best suited for the company. Relative impact of the idea, profitability of customer segments impacted, differentiation in the marketplace, degree to which customers are more deeply engaged, frequency of idea, etc. are all potential criteria. Remember to dedicate resources to sift through the ideas, run the crowdsourcing campaign, and plan and execute communication.
I’m always interested in hearing about great examples in the marketplace and the lessons learned behind them. What B2B crowdsourcing initiatives have you seen or experienced?
Who knows – maybe the idea from the accountant next door will become the next hot thing on Super Bowl Sunday. I, for one, will be enjoying those Doritos.
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