27 Mar 2012

Crowdsourcing - how sometimes a million heads is better than one

During the International Day I attended  Stephanie Fachner's course about The Detoured Media and I heard an interesting story about crowdsourcing that made me curious about this notion. How does it work? Is it really better to ask the public for an idea?
Many successful companies are using this method in order to stay in touch with their audiences, to entertain them and to receive the most loved ideas directly from the public. I think this is a nice way to challenge customers and to show them that their opinion matters to you. Maybe these are the reasons why Starbucks, Mc' Donalds, Oreo, Yahoo, Peugeot, Fiat, Lego and many others are taking in seriously this way of picking marketing ideas. 
 For example, Starbucks  has a popular internet page- My Startbucks Idea - promoting a crowdsourcing campaign for those who want to shape the future of Starbucks by adding products, promotions etc. Here are some results (http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/apex/idealist?lsi=0) :

Because of the internet, now we have so many and easy ways to ask and provide feedback and opinions from the costumers. We are grew up in the Internet age and  we should take advantage of the networked world. Sometimes is better to engage the customers in developing new offerings or products because it keeps them close to the brand and  they can offer great ideas.  Crowdsourcing taps into the collective intelligence of online communities to complete marketing-related tasks that a company would normally either perform itself or outsource to a third-party provider. Therefore,  "wisdom of the crowd" becomes in this era an important tool for a brand in order to be successful.

Maria Bogus

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