As Paige describes in her recent post, crowdsourcing is a term popularly used to describe the content-creating method of using customer submitted ideas to direct the creation of new products and/or services. (For the sake of this post, I will be referring to crowdsourcing as it specifically refers to businesses seeking customers’ creativity and original input, not to be confused with businesses providing opportunities for customers to select content as in the case of a contest.) The term has become popular with the growth of brand interactions on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. But while the practice has led to brand praise for democracy (My Starbucks Idea) and scorn for dishonesty (Crispin’s Brammo logo), in fact, the growing popularity of crowdsourcing sheds more light on the minimal customer understanding of businesses in the past than it does on deeper customer-brand relationship potential in the future.
Brand goals have remained unchanged through the rise of crowdsourcing. Brands create values for products and services. These values differentiate a product from its competitors, create a place for it in the community and most importantly, identify its place in the life of the customer. A brand is built to give life to plastic, to give a voice to a cleaning solution, to give a heart to an automobile. Brand values design social perception around products and create customer expectation. Clichéd expectations include the safety of a Volvo, the taste of a Big Mac and more recently, the ease and convenience of flying Southwest. These ideas represent the power of a brand to give life and expectation to a product, creating trust and in turn, creating customers.
The idea of crowdsourcing is not new to brands. Businesses are created by people to provide products and services to more people. Fast food was developed in recognition of time constraints and quick service, laptops were developed for portability and travel, and each product was created by people, for people. Most businesses work with focus groups and surveys to gain an understanding of general and more specific audience groups’ needs and wants. These results then translate, after many financial and legal meetings, into the creation or destruction of new ventures. The point is, there has always been a customer component directing new products. The concept is not new.
But there is something vastly different about current crowdsourcing techniques and previous methods of customer response: publicity. While previous methods of concept development were kept in-house or amongst specific groups of people with confidentiality agreements, crowdsourcing is fueled by the publicity of the developments and the openness of user-generated content. The process becomes the promotion.
But whether companies have embraced crowdsourcing or not, the real telling of a strong and innovative brand is in its understanding of how its customers use their products to represent themselves.
“American Apparel, by partnering with LOOKBOOK.nu and creating this incredible booklet out of our community’s user-generated content, has shown that they’re willing to give up some of that control and shine a spotlight on how the customers are taking their brand, mixing it up, messing with it and making it their own.”
While crowdsourcing was used in the development of their 2010 fashion book, American Apparel gains loyalty from its customers for the company’s understanding of its audience and recognition that its brand is one tool among many that customers use to express themselves. They did not try to censor customers or only show pictures of American Apparel products, but instead provided a place for individual expression and honesty. This decision was not a business one, but a human one, understanding the needs and interests of their customers without direct sales in mind.
Customers will always make brands their own. They will always mix and match fashion labels and use different ingredients from what recipes suggest. They will update the engines in their cars, computers and even add engines to their bikes, skateboards and surfboards. The question is, does your brand want to be included in those customer conversations and innovations, or will you remain on the “safe” road, the one where investors, not customers, have the strongest relationship with your brand?
