Being a graphic designer, there is probably nothing that raises my hackles more than the idea of crowdsourcing. For me, it is yet another thing helping to monetarily and creatively devalue my career in this time where no one has any budget for anything. Yes, I admit it, I’m bitter and this may or may not be sort of a rant. I went to school for design and have spent many years trying to get people to understand that it is not about drawing nice pictures but helping a client communicate his or her mission the most effective way possible. Now, with lack of budgets and people continuing to undervalue my service profession, I am getting more and more squeezed out. Rather than a lawyer, a doctor, or an accountant whose service people seek out, I am becoming no different from someone whose job has been shipped overseas. So how is it possible to make peace with something that threatens my very livelihood? Whether I like it or not, this is not a new phenomenon nor will it go away and how should I learn to make it work for me?
Reading around, I’ve been reminded that not all crowdsourcing is evil. It’s not only “Enter this contest to come up with our next long-term marketing strate—ehem, I mean, logo!!”. It’s also about engaging others to become involved with solving perplexing issues that maybe have stalemated companies or sponsoring a fun way to keep a dialogue with one’s audience.
And what exactly is a crowd? Usually it is individuals with diverse skill sets coming together to set their creative problem-solving skills to a task at hand. They may be motivated by furthering their skill set, earning extra money, or are just up to a challenge. They are usually younger and better educated. Here are some stats from Panos Iperotis conducted a crowd demographic study on (and about!) Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing site devoted to having people solve quick and easy general tasks. Another interesting study was done by Daren Brabham of those who contribute to iStockphoto, a crowdsourced stock imagery site.
However, in his well-stated article in Forbes about the myth of crowdsourcing, Dan Woods reminds us that there are no crowds, only individual innovators. Really, no one is working collectively on these problems, just talented people working on their own. My snark mechanism wants to add “Yeah, underpaid or laid-off people!” Especially because crowdsourcing implies that people are paid for collaborating, but they’re not. It is basically a lot of people creating work on spec (free work) in the hopes that there is a chance that the work will taken and (hopefully) paid for. In a great many cases it is no different from contests which are also shortcuts businesses tend to use to get out of paying for creative work.
However, in the rush to take advantage of social media for public relations and fostering ties to the community, crowdsourcing can be a valuable tool for businesses. It can help them engage with their audience and make people excited about their products and services. For example, Pepsi and Starbucks use it to help gain new ideas for products and last year Chiquita had people rework their existing iconic blue stickers that are affixed to bananas. It can give the company the most bang for the buck when they tie certain aspects of it with a solid, long-term plan. However, it is important for a business to keep in mind that they still need to be responsible for their own voice and not leave it up to their audience to do it for them. It is no different than using focus groups to completely determine your product launch strategy. More often than not the results are skewed and are not usually indicative of how well your product will actually do. Business cannot use crowdsourcing to substitute for laziness, lack of focus or too many people making critical decisions about where the company should go. The crowd is great for blue sky thinking but businesses have to be able to put those ideas into a context or a road map that they have set themselves.
So who uses crowd resources? Everyone. From TV and media, government, non-profit organizations to consumer-driven companies. Basically there is something for everyone. Did you know that reCaptcha, those annoying squiggly words that you have to type in when you enter information onto certain sites and is now owned by Google is a crowdsourcing project to help Google in the digitization of the printed word? I sure didn’t!
I have to say that honestly this is a much bigger topic than can be covered in the space of this column so I choose to focus on consumer-driven companies but anyone out there is welcome to chime in their thoughts in the comments.
Let’s consider two cases: P&G and (in)famously, the Gap.
Quite awhile ago, while doing some research for work, I had stumbled upon Procter & Gamble’s site that puts up technical problems for the general public to solve. I thought this was very odd and while rather cool to see what they were looking for, it felt uncomfortable because in my opinion here was yet again another company looking for a way to cut corners for innovation. However in his renowned article in Wired where the term crowdsourcing was termed, Jeff Howe explained that P&G, having trouble solving particular technical issues via their own R&D department, ended up turning the to crowd at InnoCentive for help. The great thing was not only did they keep their staff (as of that writing) of 9000, they added to it through the crowd and was able to solve problems that had continually stumped them.
InnoCentive is a network originally funded by Eli Lilly where for- and non-profit companies (which also include Boeing and DuPont) can list challenges for people to solve and actually get quite a bit of cash for it. Hell, if I were way more technical, I would be so all over this. But I am not getting my chemistry set out any time soon nor am I going to try to pass high school physics again in order to see if I can do it. But this is a good example: Colgate-Palmolive had unsuccessfully tried to develop a way to get powdered fluoride into toothpaste tubes. The challenge was put up on InnoCentive and Ed Melcarek, a lone engineer with an extensive background in sciences, came up with the solution. This was a guy who was unhappy at his job and had never been able to use his skills in the way he wanted. For solving the problem, he ended up with a handsome payday too. I might add that crowdsourcing tends to work best when the answer is not an open-ended one.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, when the Gap rolled out their new logo last year, one couldn’t help but wonder if the whole thing wasn’t a huge joke. But of course it wasn’t. The logo was designed by Laird + Partners, who have a long-standing relationship with the Gap. In an article on the Forbes blog, it was speculated:
Since the public hasn’t warmed up to Gap’s offering, the company’s answer seems to boil down to “Oh yeah, well can you do better?” The Gap offered the following response on its Facebook page yesterday, a few days after receiving the public’s response:
“Thanks for everyone’s input on the new logo! We’ve had the same logo for 20+ years, and this is just one of the things we’re changing. We know this logo created a lot of buzz and we’re thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding! So much so we’re asking you to share your designs. We love our version, but we’d like to see other ideas. Stay tuned for details in the next few days on this crowd sourcing project.”
Was it Gap’s original plan to crowdsource the project shortly after presenting a logo change? Callegy told me the company had ”always planned to use the new logo campaign online and in holiday ads before rolling out fully in 2011,” but the company is now “evaluating the next steps.” Whatever the case, it plays out as more of a reactionary coping strategy than a well-laid marketing plan.
First of all, for the layperson, the main tenet of corporate ID is that your logo has to give an idea about who you are in an instant. When a designer gets a creative brief, there are certain required parameters that he or she has to take into account like (among other things), who is this company selling to? What is good or service they want to sell? What type of feeling do they want to convey about themselves? The problem is that when one uses these types of crowdsourcing tactics, there is no brief anywhere. And, putting the communication of an iconic brand’s future without any specific guidelines to an audience that does not have a good grasp of brand communication is just plain crazy and shows a serious lack of judgment in its management. I also think it says a lot about how the Gap felt about its new logo when they decided not to do a huge relaunch of the brand but instead, chose to quietly start incorporating it into their website, advertising and other applications. It’s yet another example of bad management, lack of vision and self-confidence as a company. A good logo would go a long way in helping them do that.
In any case, I should get back to the “making peace” with the crowdsourcing part of this exercise. I will say one thing in its defense. For the past couple of years, due to the economy and the changes in my industry, it looked like my job was in jeopardy many many times. And with it being so hard to find viable options for new jobs, the proliferation of sites such as iStockphoto and Shutterstock has been a blessing in that I know that I can fall back on that net or use it to make extra money. To be sure, it is bittersweet because I know that their popularity has done a lot to fuel the instability of the creative field to begin with. I ask myself many times if this is what my industry will come to.
The beauty of the client-designer relationship that doesn’t come from crowdsourcing is that I am building a history with someone. There is a sharing of ideas and I get learning about the company that helps me develop fresh and innovative thinking to incorporate into my designs. I realize that a relationship can get stale and many times it is helpful if the company tries a new designer. But it is a personalized service much like as equated before, to an accountant or a lawyer.
So maybe there is a middle ground. One solution could be agencies like Genius Rocket, a curated type of crowdsourcing. Don’t get me wrong, this still fully raises my hackles because I still feel it contributes to the devaluation of the creative process but it is better than working for free. At Genius Rocket, the prospective client creates a brief according to preset guidelines and then creators are selected through a few rounds of paid work processes until they are matched together. It is not as cheap as some options but can be less expensive than hiring a traditional large agency. But at least designers get paid for their work. I don’t like that they are most likely not paid a market rate, but at least they are paid. I look at it like a call center for designers.
I’d be interested in hearing your views on crowdsourcing. I realize that I have a very negative opinion on it but I also realize that it does have benefits. Has this impacted your line of work? Do you benefit from it? Have you had negative consequences as a result of it? I’d love to know!
