Insights on using crowdsourcing for marketing

As I will be running a Crowdsourcing for Marketing workshop in New York this Thursday, I was keen to attend the Marketing session at CrowdConf today.

Here are brief notes from the speakers through what was an excellent panel discussion:

Neil Perry, CEO, Poptent
A key to getting quality contribution is giving education. They are junior filmmakers, so they want tips, contributed by veterans. Often hidden or new people are the ones who hit the brief out of the ballpark.

The roles are changing between clients and agencies.

Have team to provide positive feedback and encouragement to all contributors.

Sometimes do private jobs with just 15 creators. You need to continue to give the best people opportunities.

It is not price that is driving brands wanting to use crowds for video. It is a better process for clients, seeing many high-quality submissions rather than having to choose between 3 storyboards from an agency and seeing a video 60 days later that may not meet their needs.

Noah Clark, Executive Creative Director, Victors & Spoils

Instead of scarce, finite in-house creative resources we go to the crowd.

To get quality you need clarity and simplicity. Keep it open enough to get ideation and a free flow of ideas. But you don’t want to let it get out of hand. Will provide direction to contributors every day through the process.

There are always surprises. It’s always the people you expect the least who do the best.

Need to provide feedback in bite sizes.

Shelley Kuipers, Founder & CEO, Chaordix

To get quality you need human ways of bringing best people to the top.

Democratize and make transparent the market research process. It is persistent rather than a one-off survey or focus group.

Francois Petavy, CEO, eYeka

The more transparent you are on what you are trying to achieve, the greater the quality. Measure quality by: idea, execution, relevance.

Agencies are still critical to clients, but in a long-standing relationship you need new, outside ideas and perspectives.

60% of people think they are creative, and 40% would be happy to contribute to brands.

Contributors are looking for validation, for example being able to tell their parents they have been successful and can justify pursuing a creative career.

Wendy, Lea, CEO, Get Satisfaction

The company is a customer engagement platform. Brings social content into platform and re-publishes, keeping conversations online with SEO benefits.

Establishing a clear philosophy and standards enables effective crowd behaviors.