It Would Have Been a Great Story

I was supposed to have a great, full-length post for all of you today, but it turns out I was taken for a ride and my source was fake.

It’s a true shame; it was a story about a major company (unnamed; they’re probably catching enough flack for this already) who launched a campaign asking users of their website to design a print ad for the chance to win a trip. Whoever developed this prank, or whatever it is, set up an entire site for submitting, viewing, and voting on these ads.

But as the submissions trickled it, it was clear that they weren’t going in the direction they were supposed to. This unnamed company has some pretty shady business practices, and the vast majority of the submitted ads called these practices into question in ways that wouldn’t be considered “kind” or “not heavy-handed”.

It would have been brutal if it was true. Imagine a company blindly launching a campaign without being aware of the general populace’s opinion of them. And imagine the campaign entirely involved having people plaster whatever message they want on a professional-looking ad with your company’s name and logo. It would have been a fiasco.

Unfortunately, the campaign was created not by the company, but by some outside force that opposed their politics. Further digging into the website proved it was all subtly tongue-in-cheek,  designed in such a way that it would only reveal itself as fake if you gave it more than a cursory glance.

So why was I taken in at first? Because this company wouldn’t have been the first one to make a mistake like this. A big aspect of crowdsourcing that continues to keep some companies away is the lack of control and privacy. When you host a contest like this, it does indeed become exceedingly important what the public’s opinion of your company is. If your company is controversial, crowdsourcing will provide you with messages that promote both sides of the issue. Unfortunately, there is usually one side that yells louder, and that’s the dissenters.

So is there a lesson we can learn from this? Crowdsourcing is best suited to companies that already have a large positive following. Will it completely stop situations like this? No, but a lot of consumers on your side certainly helps support the messages you’re actually trying to promote. Conversely, if your company is afraid of what the populace has to say about them… well, maybe they should reconsider how clean their hands are.

XKCD on Crowdsourcing

From xkcd.com:

XKCD is always relevant, and this one struck me as especially poignant since it reflects my ultimate goal for crowdsourcing. Do you think the speaker realizes he is describing the death of his own job?

Stephen Fry Helps Push Crowdsourced Campaign to Fight HIV

© 2012 Chelsea and Westminster Hospital

HIV and sexual health clinic 56 Dean Street is teaming up with (awesome) actor Stephen Fry to crowdsource ads designed to raise awareness of HIV. Focused around the Community Campaign Facebook page, the campaign follows the typical “contest” model of crowdsourcing. Ads will be openly accepted from all comers, and the crowd will vote to decide the winners. The best ads will be displayed across multiple media outlets, and heavily featured in prominent London gay bars.

I love campaigns like this, because they target exactly the right audience. The ads will be primarily geared towards gay men, a community already famous for their unique style of creative flair. Add that to the videographers and other content producers from all circles;  they’re more than eager to tackle hot-button issues like HIV, since a controversial or popular video provides publicity for its creators. Also, 56 Dean attaching Stephen Fry to the project opens it up to his entire fan base. Some may not be particularly passionate about HIV awareness or the gay community, but they’ll support anything backed by their idol anyway. Heck, I might not have even seen this campaign if his name didn’t catch my eye.

Essentially, we’ve got a “perfect storm” of creatives that will be chomping at the bit to produce an ad like this, and 56 Dean Street is going to receive an enormous number of submissions. And as a bonus, since this is an awareness campaign, even the process of voting for the final ad will contribute to their overall cause. This is well-done crowdsourcing, and I think 56 Dean will be very pleased with the results. Look to the Facebook page on August 13th, when the submissions will be in and voting can begin.

The Second-Best Swordsman; What GeniusRocket Is Doing Wrong

I’m not gonna beat around the bush with this one, kids. The ad-production company GeniusRocket claims to be a crowdsourcing agency, but they suck and you shouldn’t use them. Today’s lesson is about what crowdsourcing isn’t.

What crowdsourcing isn’t: Exhibit A

Cruise on up to that “What Is Crowdsourcing” tab at the top of the page, and scope the second paragraph. “Crowdsourcing involves taking a task that would ordinarily be completed by a hired individual or group, and instead hosting an open call for whoever wants to work on the task to do so.” GeniusRocket drops the ball right off the bat by using a “curated crowd“. From the site’s Community page:

“Every member of our community is vetted for their experience and expertise. As a result you won’t find amateurs or students. In other words, you won’t find people in our community that are trying break into the business by working on a client’s project.”

Red flags right there. By having such a stringent process for being a part of their crowd, GeniusRocket essentially takes away everything that makes a crowd a useful thing. This is a difficult concept to wrap one’s head around, but it’s called the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem and it basically states that a varied group will outperform a group of experts every time. Mark Twain explained it best, if you’re willing to accept metaphor:

“The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him.”

A group of experts, with the same talents, same education, and similar backgrounds, will always come up with the same ideas that they’ve been coming up with forever. A diverse crowd will offer a multitude of perspectives, which more often than not leads to breakthroughs and inspiration you simply won’t get from a homogenized group of professionals that have done the same thing, the same way, for their whole lives.

Pictured: Not The Crowd You Want Helping You

As a result, you’ve got a company that wants to have the advantages of crowdsourcing but is afraid of the risks, so the service they offer is simply the illusion of crowdsourcing. You’ll get varied ideas from different perspectives, if your definition of “varied” and “different” is actually “same as it’s always been”. And you don’t have to take my word for it; watch some of their ads. They’re terrible, pointless, or disturbing at worse and average at best.

Now, the platform is salvageable, but they need to make some big changes. Namely, they need to realize that by definition of both terms, there can be no such thing as a “crowdsourcing agency”. So hey, GeniusRocket execs, if you’re reading this: shoot me an email. Something has to change at your company and I’d like to help you with it instead of bitching about it on the Internet.

Thank You, Sameeha and TheInkedLeaf!

If you’ll direct your gaze towards the top of the screen, you’ll notice that instead of boring black block text welcoming you to this blog, I now have a gorgeous custom banner! And if you look to your right, you’ll see an equally handsome logo!

“Those are sweet, Seth! How’d you get them?”

I’m glad you asked, hypothetical inquirer! The answer is one Sameeha Bricklemyer and her custom-design website TheInkedLeaf.com. While not a crowdsourcing site in itself, it was crowdsourcing that led me there after Sameeha won a design contest for Baltimore TechBreakfast. This attracted my attention, I contacted her to commission a logo, and it went from planning to completion in less than a week.

Gushing about a platform/service I like is kind of my M.O., and this isn’t going to be any different. Sameeha was professional and courteous every step of the way, made it clear exactly what would be expected from both of us, and handled my many revisions, mind-changes, and backpedals with poise and expertise. The end result was exactly what I was looking for in a logo, and I couldn’t be more happy about it. And while I am not at liberty to reveal what I was charged, suffice it to say it was extremely reasonable. As in, you’ll-spend-more-on-a-fancy-date reasonable.

This experience has shown me another layer of crowdsourcing. Until now I’ve focused on platforms without much regard for the end result, but now I’ve had first-hand experience with what a successful crowdsourcing campaign can do for a brand. Sameeha got TechBreakfast business and my business; this isn’t going to be anywhere near the end for her. Because now I’m writing about it, and you’re reading it thinking “you know, I could use a custom designer that knows what the heck she’s doing and doesn’t give me the runaround…”