Tristesse? Alfred de Musset

Crowdsourcing of Advertising

Marketing is increasingly using the internet in more innovative ways. One of these is crowdsourcing as a means of exploiting user-generated content (UGC) as part of an advertising campaign. The internet has helped crowdsourcing to spread and campaigns often involve many people who come together to support a particular event.

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One great example of crowdsourcing is the ‘Crash the Super Bowl’ campaign from Doritos. This annual competition is run to unearth a television advert that Doritos will air live on one of its prestigious and hugely expensive television slots during the NFL Super Bowl in the USA. Since its launch in 2006, thousands of adverts have been submitted. The winner not only gets to see the advert shown live during one of the world’s largest sporting events, but also wins $1 million and a job at Universal Pictures. Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of this competition is that the public decides who the winner is from a shortlist of eight finalists whose 30-second videos are uploaded to YouTube a month before the Super Bowl is played. This innovative and hugely engaging campaign puts crowdsourcing at the centre of not only the production but also the decision-making behind which advert will be shown.

The impact of this competition is that it generates great public relations and uncovers a talented mix of video producers who can be used by the company for more standard promotional work. The real positive for Doritos is that it can create a narrative that runs alongside the sporting event. The public are engaged in the process, and the impact and brand awareness of the company grows as interest in the potential winner increases. The narrative is also enhanced by the fact that official odds are given as to the likely winner and people can place bets not only on the winner of the Super Bowl but also on who will win the Doritos advert competition. This type of organized crowdsourcing, although appearing to give control to the general public, can legitimately be included as part of a conventional media execution.

Crowdsourcing is still in its infancy and has the potential to grow using other platforms. One that has attracted a large amount of interest is the crowdsourcing content of the ‘Our Stories’ feature on Snapchat. When at an event, anyone using the app with the location setting turned on and posting their pictures to ‘Our Stories’ may have their post collated into an ‘official’ collection of snaps for that event. These are uploaded by Snapchat in near real time (after a moderating process) and appear as part of the timeline of the event. The timeline can be viewed by anybody. Snapchat often utilizes the ‘Our Stories’ feature of NCAA College Football matches, and the timeline regularly features snaps taken from not only the fans but also players, giving a unique view not offered anywhere else. These ‘Our Stories’ include pre-event, in-event and post-event content, with the added interest of the sportsmen/musicians and so on also snapping behind-the-scenes action. The rise of this type of activity is particularly powerful in the area of event marketing, where new perspectives can be generated that would not be possible using conventional media.[pic 2]

Questions:

1. A big factor in crowdsourcing is that it enables the public to

     influence a marketing communication. What are the pros and

     cons of this type of influence?

2. To what extent do you think that crowdsourcing and

    conventional marketing approaches are compatible?

3. Organizational structures have adapted to the rapid rise of the

    web. To what extent do you expect crowdsourced marketing

    campaigns, such as the Doritos ‘Crash the Super Bowl’ campaign,

    to continue to be popular, and what are the consequences of this

...