20 Interesting Things: Crowdsourcing June 2010

BEFORE WE BEGIN
This is the third in a series of five white papers we plan to publish this year capturing and exploring interesting happenings in the digital and social worlds. Our other papers have included 20 Interesting Things: Foursquare and 20 Interesting Things: Augmented Reality .
Crowdsourcing is one of the trends we covered last fall in our 10 Trends To Watch In 2010 piece. We will revisit a few of these examples and add many new ones.
Crowdsourcing is not a new idea, but it has taken on new life in the digital age (think Wikipedia ). With a simple website, anyone (individual, marketer or brand) can solicit ideas from the untapped masses inhabiting cyberspace. So far marketers seem to be utilizing the idea as inspiration for product extensions, new products, new flavors and even marketing ideas. The possibilities seem limitless.

#1 DOMINO’S PIZZA UK
Crowdsourcing sales. Thanks to the new cash-rewards widget, everyone with a social-network site or blog can cash in on the popularity of Domino’s Pizza. All you have to do is install the widget on your site or profile page, start promoting Domino’s and wait for the sales to roll in.
You’ll get a cash reward each time a friend or visitor to your website gets hungry and places an order with Domino’s. The widget will keep track of your sales and you’ll get a generous slice from every purchase. Learn more here .
Source: sourcewire.com

#2 MOUNTAIN DEW
DEWmocracy . For the last year Mountain Dew has been rallying soft drink fans not only to create and name three new Dew flavors, but to market them too. Since last year, competing teams chose flavors, voted on new drink names ( Typhoon , Distortion and White Out ), spread the word on Twitter and Facebook, inspected commercials and organized stops for a sampling vehicle. Currently, DEWmocracy members are working on the media-buying process.
Source: mediapost.com The DEWmocracy platform has become a pedestal for collaboration among fans, as Pepsi loosens control and turns over the creative process and marketing to those who dig deep into their pockets to support the brand. Learn more here .

#3 RYZ WEAR
RYZ Wear empowers everyday people to design sneakers. RYZ provides users with a Photoshop template in which they can go wild and be as creative as possible. When they’re finished creating their shoe design, they simply upload their template back to the site where the community judges it. The most popular shoe designs, as voted by RYZ viewers, are put into production. Learn more here .
Source: Trendhunter.com

#4 STARBUCKS
In an effort to reduce the waste its coffee cups cause, Starbucks is sponsoring The Betacup project , an open challenge to design a coffee cup that reduces the interminable waste caused by disposable ones. (The coffee giant estimates that 58 billion paper coffee cups go unrecycled each year.) Participants in the project just need to upload their concepts to Jovoto where they will be rated by the community. Learn more here .
Source: Trendcentral.com

#5 FOOD52.COM
Brooklyn food writers Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs are crowdsourcing their next cookbook on a site called Food52 . To guide the community, every week two themes will be presented which will act as a call for recipes. Then Hesser and Stubbs select the most promising ones, test them, and choose the best two for each theme. They will then present these back to the Food52 members, who get to vote on which one will make it into the cookbook. Learn more here .
Source: techcrunch.com

#6 JONES SODA
Back in 2000, a tiny brand named Jones Soda used its website to ask its mostly teenage customers to suggest new flavors, names, and labels and let other customers vote on which should make it into stores. Since then, they’ve posted 676,653 user-created labels and become a nationally distributed brand with a cult following.
Source: Adage.com (Nov. 2008)

#7 PAPA JOHN’S
In April, Papa John’s asked its loyal customers on Facebook to share their ideas for the next great specialty pizza as part of the company’s first ever “Papa’s Specialty Pizza Challenge.” Participants were asked to create and name their very own specialty pie on Papa John’s fresh, never frozen original dough with sauce, cheese and a combination of up to seven Papa John’s better ingredients. Learn more here .
Source: qsrmagazine.com

#8 THE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE LONDON
Last year The Royal Opera House in London used Twitter to crowdsource the libretto for a new “people’s opera.” On August 3, the opera house provided a brief opening line and let the Twitterverse take over , successfully performing the completed opera in early September. More than 900 people contributed. Watch a brief video outtake here and learn more here .
Source: Springwise.com

#9 VITAMINWATER
Vitaminwater recently turned to its Facebook fans to come up with its next flavor. The Flavorcreator Facebook app , was designed to crowdsource the company’s next product.
Source: adweek.com Eric Berniker, VP, marketing for Vitaminwater, said that in the first phase, the company “eavesdropped” on Facebook and Twitter conversations about which flavors were gaining popularity. After that, the company diagnosed which vitamins and minerals consumers wanted via a Facebook quiz. Finally, fans were called in to develop a name, design and copy for the bottle. The product went live in March 2010. Learn more here and here .

#10 L’ANIMA
Last fall, hip London restaurant L’Anima used crowdsourcing to select part of their wine list , utilizing online video and Twitter to let patrons and fans help their wine experts finalize the list. Learn more here .
Source: gadgetfiends.com

#11 KETTLE CHIPS
The Kettle Chips Create-a-Chip Kit ($15) provides everything you need to create your own crunchy masterpiece, including seven bags of all-natural seasoning blends, four bags of unseasoned chips, and three full- sized bags of past People’s Choice winners for inspiration. Once you’ve perfected your recipe, go to the Kettle Chip Challenge website to submit your mix and help inspire the next flavor of Kettle Chip.
Source: uncrate.com

#12 SOUR
Last fall, Japanese band Sour asked their fan base to create a video for their single “Hibi no Neiro.” Fans from around the world were given specific instructions on what to do using only their respective Webcams to record their actions. See the video here .

#13 OPENSTREETMAP
Started in 2004, OpenStreetMap is a collaborative project to create free editable maps of the world. The maps are created using data from portable GPS devices, aerial photography, other free sources or simply from local knowledge. Both rendered images and the vector graphics are available for download under a Creative Commons license.
Source: wikipedia.org The map display features a prominent “Edit” tab and a full revision history is maintained. Registered users can upload GPS track logs and edit the vector data using the given editing tools. Learn more here .

#14 DORITOS
Probably the most recognizable crowdsourcing example in recent years is Doritos’ use of crowdsourced ideas for its Super Bowl TV commercials. Doritos introduced their Crash The Super Bowl contest during the 2006 season, with the winner’s spot shown during the February 2007 Super Bowl. The contest has grown in size and popularity each year since, with the winner now taking home a $1 million prize. In 2009, a TV spot that cost $2,000 to make won the top spot in USA Today’s annual Super Bowl Ad Meter poll.

#15 PROJECT SPLITWHEEL
You could be the designer of the next hot Caterham sports car by joining Project Splitwheel . The British auto manufacturer has partnered with Splitwheel to create the world’s first website of its kind. The site will gather a group of car enthusiasts who will jointly bring a virtual car into reality.
Source: trendhunter.com The online team will brainstorm cutting-edge concepts to develop a prototype sports car for Caterham Cars. All aspects of the design will be considered, from the car’s power, styling, handling, and advanced technology. Members also will take part in voting on what makes it to the final design. Learn more here and here .

#16 ELEMENTS
The people have spoken, and they want a sustainable, vegetarian/raw foods restaurant. Restaurant-to-be Elements is the first to crowdsource its theme and menu.
The “crowd” (about 400 strong) is comprised of a random group of people who offer opinions on everything from the look to the logo on a community website. Though Elements’ owner, Linda Welch, reserves final decision-making power, she uses the comments as a guide. Indeed, Welch’s original plan for a 1,500-square-foot café was scrapped in favor of larger digs and a green theme.
Community members earn points for participation. Those who accrue at least 1% of the total points are eligible for some kind of profit-sharing. Learn more here and here .
Source: Iconoculture

#17 DUNKIN’ DONUTS
Create Dunkin’s Next Donut contest. Imagination and available ingredients are the only limitations as consumers build their donut using Dunkin’ Donuts’ donut-building website , creating their donut from scratch by selecting its shape, dough, filling, frosting and toppings. After the submission deadline, donuts will be judged internally, with the company selecting the top 12 finalists. Those donuts will be up for online voting beginning in April. Learn more here .
Source: mashable.com

#18 PABST
BuyABeerCompany.com presents the most ambitious crowdsourcing effort yet: $300 million for the Pabst Brewing Co. They’re asking legal-age fans of Pabst’s 25 brands to pledge between $5 and $250,000 each toward acquisition of the company. Money only will be accepted if the full purchase amount is reached, at which point all contributors will get “a crowdsourced certificate of ownership as well as enough beer to match their pledge.” Learn more here and here .
Source: Spirngwise.com

#19 NETFLIX
In 2006, Netflix threw down the gauntlet: Build a better way to recommend movies to its users than its own software and win a million bucks. Three years later, Netflix awarded the seven-figure sum to a seven-person team of mathematicians and computer engineers called BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos. The group developed software that’s at least 10% more accurate than Netflix’s Cinematch at predicting which movies customers will like based on their past preferences.
BellKor was among the 40,000 groups from 186 countries handed an overwhelming amount of data (100 million movie ratings by Netflix users) and asked to make sense of it all. The requirement: Top Cinematch’s 10% accuracy rating. Learn more here .
Source: NYDailyNews.com

#20 BP OIL SPILL
A health and justice organization in New Orleans called The Louisiana Bucket Brigade has launched a mapping tool that collects data from citizen reporters in order to depict the magnitude of the explosion and subsequent oil spill.
Source: Mashable.com The Oil Spill Crisis Map includes a Web-based map that shows, in real time, reports of everything from job loss to wildlife endangerment along the coast. Reports are filed via text message, e-mail, Twitter and the Web. The map itself is a rather intriguing tool (and promises to be more illustrative as more people contribute) but the actual reports are perhaps even more effective. Learn more here .

WRAP-UP
Crowdsourcing is about giving the consumer ultimate control. It also plays into individuality as like-minded individuals are likely to be attracted to similar crowdsourcing opportunities, creating an acceptable outcome that feels personalized to each individual.
It can be a risky and rewarding proposition for any brand to undertake, but it is a necessity as brands slowly cede control of who they are to their true brand managers … the customers.

CONTACT AND MORE INFORMATION
If you are interested in learning more about Luckie & Company and how we think, please visit our website, www.luckie.com , and check out our 10 Trends to Watch in 2010 .
We publish five monthly newsletters. Four “Trend Tracker” newsletters that take a quick look at what’s new and interesting in the Banking , Snacking , Telecom and Tourism industries and one “ Generational News & Views ” newsletter that takes a quick topical look into the lives of Gen Y, Gen X and Baby Boomers.
If you would like a complimentary subscription to any of these newsletters, please e-mail [email_address] and mention your newsletter of interest in the subject line.

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20 Interesting Things: Crowdsourcing June 2010

by David Stutts on Jun 10, 2010

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20 Interesting Things: Crowdsourcing June 2010 — Presentation Transcript