Crowdsourcing: A One-Way Ticket to Blah | Design & Innovation | Fast Company

Description

Crowdsourcing: A One-Way Ticket to Blah

Agency types are betting that crowdsourcing will usher in a new type of advertising. They must be crazy.

It's come to this: Ad agencies, in a push to get hip with the kids, lower their price points, and produce better ideas, seem to be piling onto the crowdsourcing bandwagon. But can crowdsourcing produce anything more than mediocre work?

Evangelists for the trend say that crowdsourcing opens the competitive field, to talent that would otherwise go overlooked. Typically, you offer a prize, open the gates, and let the best idea win. You get more ideas, so some of them are bound to be good, right?

The list of ad agencies trying their hand at this is growing: As The Times reports , Bartle Bogle Hegarty of London is teaming with TalentHouse ; some Crispin alums started Victors and Spoils ; there's also Crowdspring and Genius Rocket . Hell, there's even Local Motors , which attempts to use thousands of designers, to create a modular car .which produces cars produced and refined by the crowd.

You can see why ad-pros would resent this idea: These contests usually don't compensate all the participants. For example, when Crispin tried to crowdsource the logo for Brammo, it blew up their faces, with a full-on designer revolt .

Most of these new crowdsourcing ventures think they have a way around this. Genius Roket, for example, is introducing something called Genius Rocket Select. The idea is to raise the award pots, and preselect the participants in a given pitch. ...

Original URL

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/can-crowdsourcing-ever-produce-good-ideas-not-mention-great-ones?partner=rss

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/can-crowdsourcing-ever-produce-good-ideas-not-mention-great-ones?partner=rss