In Defense of Crowdsourcing

The legend of King Canute is a well-known one.

As the story goes, Canute was a wise but powerful king who was widely believed to have authority beyond reproach. One day, to prove he was mortal, his highness took his throne down to the beach, planted it at the water's edge, then ordered the tide to stop coming in. To the dismay of his public, it did not. Some things, were beyond even the divine influence of their legendary King.

The story of King Canute is used as a cautionary tale to remind us that sometimes things take place without regard for our opinions of them, and arguing their rightness or wrongness doesn't change the fact. As it went with the waves, it's doubtful King Canute would have had much luck today against the inexorable force of crowdsourcing -- it will happen regardless and is happening as we speak.

Despite its meteoric rise, crowdsourcing’s nature is polarizing and it’s fast becoming a topic that everyone must add their own two cents about. Additionally, it stokes the emotional fires like those other dinner party bugaboos -- religion and politics.

But why? After all, crowdsourcing is not a new concept. In 1715 the British Government held a crowdsourcing contest to find a maritime navigation solution –- the Longitude Prize. Several high profile companies have recently used crowdsourcing in their marketing campaigns. Mountain Dew’s “dewmocracy” and Starbucks’ mystarbucksidea.com are examples of this. More tellingly, companies like Threadless and Apple’s App store are reliant on crowdsourced creativity to sustain their business models.

Perhaps it is simply a matter of semantics. First coined by Jeff Howe in 2006, the portmanteau “crowdsourcing” smacks of “popularized exploitation” –- the way complex legislation is reduced to simplistic sound bites, or how cheap labor is outsourced to sweat shops in the developing world.

Semantics aside, it's worth mentioning that the most effective form of marketing, word of mouth, is founded upon the process of crowdsourcing opinions from our personal networks. We frequently solicit advice for recommendations on restaurants or bars in our personal lives. In this hyperconnected age it seems not just prudent, but sensible to do so. Why then is it ok to tap our network for a trivial recommendation, while it’s taboo when creative agencies solicit creativity on an as needed basis?

Its critics would have you believe crowdsourcing commoditizes and cheapens creativity, driving down the quality of work in the process. This in turn can jeopardize the livelihood of many professionals that make their living spruiking their creative wares.

Its supporters, most notably trailblazing agency Victors & Spoils, claim that we have moved from a world of scarcity to one of abundance, meaning that the capacity to crowdsource is here to stay whether we like it or not. V&S CEO John Winsor believes crowdsourcing is a voluntary, self-selecting process whereby people choose to participate or not based on their own set of beliefs. To me this seems like an inherently fair and pragmatic approach. To their credit, V&S also rewards the participants who were runners-up in each contest. This model of “compassionate crowdsourcing” paired with the creative bona fides of the V&S team will prove to be a powerful competitive advantage. Sure, other agencies could copy their business model, but how many can claim the brains trust of the V&S C-suite of John Winsor, Evan Fry and Claudia Batten?

SUMMARY
Like King Canute and the waves, the outcome of the crowdsourcing conundrum is not good or bad, it just is. Your opinion will differ depending on your own point of view and professional position. As a final word, I think it’s hard to go past the measured assessment of the ever-quotable Clay Shirky:
“The spread of cheap and widely available creative tools is sad for people in the advertising business the same way that movable type was sad for scribes -– the loss from this kind of change is real but limited and is accompanied by a generally beneficial social change.”

What do you think?

* For a more comprehensive take on crowdsourcing. Check out Rick Liebling’s great e-book, “Everyone Is Illuminated.”