Let Others Do Your Work For You

Crowdsourcing.  The first time I heard this word I thought I was listening to someone mispronounce the word outsourcing.  As it turns out, crowdsourcing is an actual phenomenon that is driving the way many large corporations do business today.  For those who are not familiar with the term, crowdsourcing essentially means outsourcing a job via an open call on the internet to an undefined group of people.  These people, in turn, provide a solution or multiple solutions to a problem through their own individual efforts or by collaborating with other members of the community.  Crowdsourcing has had such an impact that even major corporations like Proctor & Gamble use it as a tool to introduce new products to the new market.  Prior to their use of the crowdsourcing model, P&G had a success rate of ~15% on new product launches.  After leveraging the collaborative efforts of countless individuals across the web to solicit feedback on product design, features and functionality, P&G has seen the success of new product launches climb to 50%.

Although used by Fortune 500 companies such as P&G to significantly reduce R&D spend, crowdsourcing is most commonly leveraged by start-up companies.  Start-ups such as Threadless.com and iStockphoto have seen tremendous growth since their inception as the result of using the “design by democracy” approach.  Threadless.com receives 1,000 designs per week amongst its community of 600,000 members.  As designers spread the word amongst their peers to vote for their designs, the need for marketing and advertising spend is eliminated and additional traffic is directed to the site.  A feeling of belonging to this community, as well as creating new and exciting products drives commitment in lieu of financial incentives. 

Speaking of start-up companies, for someone who is looking to launch a start-up, the decision of whether or not to learn code yourself or outsource to a programmer is a difficult decision that many entrepreneurs face.  Learning code can take hours of effort, and although it’s a good skill to have, it can be done more efficiently and better by a programmer.  Of course hiring a programmer comes at a cost and many companies cannot afford the expense in their infant stages.  So what if a third alternative existed that didn’t require the time or financial expenditure of the first two options?  By simulating your vision with visual tools such as Powerpoint, Balsamiq or iMovie, you can convey your vision and value proposition to prospective employees (for recruiting purposes) or even prospective angel investors.  Next, you can leverage tools such as Weebley or Wordpress to create a widget-based website prototype.  From here, a number of online tools such as Google Analytics or Qualtrics can be used as user interaction drives data analytics.  Armed with this information, you’ll have a much more powerful story with actual market data that can be leveraged to drive recruitment and funding efforts.  Finally, by creating a strong brand image – through a solid domain name and attractive logo – you’re ready to begin directing traffic to your website though the use of social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter. 

Get on the Bus or Get Left Behind

With the proliferation of Web 2.0 – or the “Live Web” – which includes aspects such as blogging, podcasting, tagging and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, marketers have no choice but to become a part of these communities or be surpassed by their competition.  With the exponential increase in the adoption of these media, customers now have an increasing voice in how companies offer products and services, which is resulting in more collaborative and participative efforts between marketers and consumers.  Although these media have given consumers and increased voice, they also provide marketers with the ability to create, influence and participate in conversations which drive real-time decisions.  The future success of marketers depends on engaging their audience across the aforementioned realm of mediums. 

The adoption and understanding of these media by marketers will continue to pose a challenge – and likely at an increasing rate – as the pace of technology continues to rapidly change (Moore’s Law) and these new forms of technology evolve into something beyond their intended purpose. 

So are these tools advancing our society or are they simply a distraction that takes our focus and attention away from more important pursuits?  My personal opinion is that the internet is the most powerful tool ever known to mankind and it enables us to make technological advancements at an exponential rate.  The only significant fault that I find with the internet, and social media in general, is that everyone now seems to have a voice, and they can populate these sources with as much information as they want to without any checks and balances.  As a result, the amount of speculative, non-factual data that exists across media continues to grow and grow.  Being able to obtain massive quantities of data in real time continues to drive innovation at a pace that was previously incomprehensible by humans.   Unfortunately, the quantity of “garbage” data may be growing at an even faster rate, so it will be a continuous challenge to sift through the fiction and find factual data that can lead to further transformations.