#media140 : Idea Bounty

Adam Tinworth
Adam Tinworth

Did you know that the 19th century Oxford English Dictionary was crowd-sourced? It’s not a new concept, but technology brings new things to it, says Nic Ray, managing director of Quirk, particularly a wider reach.

The basic process is:
- Company broadcasts problem - Crowd offers solution - Crowd vets solutions - Company rewards winning suggestions
And you can see it in use anywhere from [Wikipedia](http://www.wikipedia.com) to [Threadless](http://www.threadless.com/), to [99 Designs](http://99designs.com/?tp1=c). And the benefits? Everything from tapping a wider range of talents, to actually building engagement with your brands. 
And yes, this is a threat to the traditional agency model. Wider range of potential talent, and lower costs? That’s attractive, and Ray seems to suggest that push-back from the traditional agency community is one of the bigger problems of the process.
You should also pick and choose where you use crowd-sourcing techniques. The more research that’s needed, or more face to face interaction, then you want to go the traditional route. 
Noam Buchalter then went on to explain why Peperami crowd-sourced ideas for future ads, as they felt the most recent peperami-charcetr-based ads weren’t as strong as they could have been. The whole process seems to have been a mix of cost-saving and engagement, as well as a source of new ideas. The filming was doen in South Africa, for example, to save costs. 
One questioner from the floor suggested that it was a missed opportunity, and that they could have gone for something genuinely “ground up”, rather than a “top down” filtering process for the final results. 

Adam Tinworth Twitter

Adam is a lecturer, trainer and writer. He's been a blogger for over 20 years, and a journalist for more than 30. He lectures on audience strategy and engagement at City, University of London.

Comments