Yesterday I visited the first SST on crowdsourcing. The organisors (Sogeti’s VINT and CreativeCrowds) lined up two speakers: Menno Douwes (director legislation of the Ministry of Justice) and Jeff Howe (author of the book and ‘inventor’ of the term crowdsourcing). While Douwes’ talk was rather boring in form, the content was rather interesting. The Dutch government is going to crowdsource all it’s future legislation. To be clear: the normal procedures in which a new law is formed will not be altered. But in the consuling phase, crowdsourcing already proofed to be a welcome addition to other form of consulting.

Jeff Howe was the typical American keynote: relaxed, jetlagged and a good storyteller. One of the insights I gathered from his speech is one of the important things in crowdsourcing: the diversity of the individual members in the crowd. Also, his answer to a question was interesting: while asked if crowdsourcing was about finding the five needles in the haystack, Howe answered: “It is more a thing of not knowing wether or not you need a needle to solve a problem. Then looking at what kind of needles show up in the process.”

Compliment to the people who organised this meeting. Please read on at the appropiate places:

MeetUp
SocialStrategyTalk (Dutch)

They had to challenge the conventions of online. To do so they tried an experiment. Apple worked with a few big sites and asked them to allow Apple to try a whole new way of doing ads.

Apple wanted custom sized units – really nice ‘real estate’ where they wouldn’t get ignored. They wanted the units to work together as one idea that interacted with each other. And they wanted placement on pages where editorial content was relevant to the ad topic. 100% share of voice was needed on each website which meant in some cases, even on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, redesigning the site itself, and also the way in which they placed ads. All this was precisely the kind of challenge that Media Arts Lab, Apple’s communication partner, was designed to take on.

Apple wanted to treat online with the same intention they have for TV: go big or don’t go at all. They wanted to feel present. Even while Apple knew this flies in the face of how people typically use online – where the ability to be niche to every audiences is part of its power. But the Apple brand didn’t need that. They needed that iconic, ever present feeling that the rest of Apple’s media has.

With new terms in the works, they created specific ads coming from the Mac and PC campaign: “Sign” and “Quote”.

The experiment paid off. Apple found a way to be Apple online — where the presence was noticed, the execution elegant. And the online audience seem to agree. Many people posted and many others watched the ads on YouTube which meant they achieved as much ‘earned’ media as they did paid media. “Sign” had over 700 thousand You Tube views alone. These ads are being lauded for their approach to a medium that isn’t typically very artful.

Source: MyTBWA – corporate TBWA Intranet

There is simply no true dialogue going on. When a company like KLM is asking clients in their BlueLab-initiative to bring up ideas to better their product, this could be defined as advanced and sensible market research. When KLM implements one of those idease and makes 30 million euro with it, then I start doubting. Because KLM – in this example – is using Open Source techniques to gather ideas, but KLM did not transform it’s business model to Open Source-principles. In the end their performance is measured on the stock exchange: their shareholders are profiting  from the ideas clients generate. Those clients ‘only’ profit because they see their ideas implemented and get the attention and recognition.

Apperantely that’s enough for current customers. More than happy that they are to have at least some way to talk back to companies that rested in ivory towers in relation to their clients. I believe that this way of using crowdsourcing (please do read the disclaimer at Dell’s IdeaStorm-website!) will work. But not for long. When companies one sided exploit ideas from crowds, these crowds someday will aks for their fair share. Or they switch to a competitor that does deliver on the dialogue. Other initiatives – like Sellaband – do share the profits with their crowd. In fact: it’s part of their business model. So: be Open Source when using Open Source principles. Or just pay for ideas that you can’t come up with yourself.

It was only a matter of time that someone, somewhere would address this: the difference in brand positioning of Dove and AXE. Both brands owned by Unilever. Dove’s campaign – highly awarded, much appraised – focus on real beauty and take a stand against the cliché image of the beauty industry. While AXE thrives on male hormones and pictures women the way that Dove is protesting against… The mash-up that is on YouTube today was made by Rye Clifton and boosted into the Blogoshere by Paul Isakson (see comments). Campaign (trady) picked it up and the Blogoshere is buzzing.

In fact this is just a modern brand dilemma: how do big corporations manage their different brands? And while communication nowadays is layered with ‘real’ stories: how do these stories relate to each other. It cannot be denied that AXE and Dove communicate on either sides of the same scale. Unilever as brand-owner didn’t make a comment on this issue (yet). AXE is ‘helping young men in the mating game’, while Dove helps ‘women to release their inner beauty’. Quotes are from the Unilever corporate website. While both brands can do their thing in splendid isolation, the corporation can be accused of speaking with a double tongue and for being not genuine or honest. This can boomerang to all other brands. One thing this issue makes clear: splendid isolation doesn’t exist any more. The web/blogoshere is doing it’s transparency-thing again…

At Friday October 19th and Saturday 20th I was host at Marktplein DM. This was the fifth time the event took place. It was my third time as a host. Earlier I already attended as a speaker. In total I visited Maastricht almost annually for direct marketing related events for about 17 years now! That makes me part of the ‘old chaps network’ that was causing a bit of a stir (later on this more).
For now please feel free to download the presentations of the speakers here.

Blog Action Day is an initiative in which bloggers all over the world are asked to blog on a specific day (October 15th) on just one issue/subject: the environment. I enlisted with DR | ADV already and now I’m part of a (growing) network of 9.203 blogs (and counting…). In total these blogs reach the stunning amount of 6,796,283 persons.

I really like this initiative. Because it shows the longtail-effect of blogging in such a clear way. Also because I’m very curious HOW all these bloggers are going to write about the subject. Will they integrate it in their blog’s editorial framework? Or will they – just on this day – ignore their format? I choose the first option. There is plenty of time to thing on a subject. But please be my guest and let me know how you would link the environment with Direct Response Advertising. Watch the video on Blog Action Day here.

Update: Oops… October 15th gone by and I didn’t even notice it. So much for this nice initiative. But I think I’ve got an item up my sleeve. And what the heck: this issue is too important to just stick it to one specific day! Don’t you agree?