Michelle Rodger: Ridley's online film should draw us all to crowdsourcing

Published on Friday 9 July 2010 19:09

WHAT will you be doing on 24 July, 2010? Mowing the lawn? Lunching with friends? Visiting your gran? Or will you be taking part in the latest crowdsourcing event being launched by Alien film director Ridley Scott?

Scott is harnessing the power of global social media to create a feature length film documentary, aiming to persuade wannabe movie stars to film a moment in their lives on that day and upload it to YouTube. Those whose films make the director's cut will see their names on the credits as co-directors, and some will be invited to the premiere at the Sundance Festival in January.

According to State Of Play director Kevin Macdonald, Scott's co-director of Life In A Day, this is about engaging the online community to take part in a unique experiment in social filmmaking.

Experiment? Sure. Unique? Probably. A euphemism for low-budget movie? Definitely. But the beauty of crowdsourcing is that the low-cost, high-reach opportunity can be realised by all of us.

Crowdsourcing is just like a giant suggestion box. You ask a question, post it where the world and its mother can see it, and wait for feedback.

I oversimplify… slightly. Crowdsourcing is described on Wikipedia as the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals (I think I prefer my version).

It can be used for myriad business needs; idea generation, customer support, product development, R&D, sales and funding (there's a site that allows you to pitch an idea and receive funding for it from the online community) forecasting, advertising and marketing, resources, professional services and product/software testing, to name but a handful.

Look at some of the big companies taking this low-cost approach instead of allocating a budget that would normally exceed that of a small African country.

Audi is currently crowdsourcing a car. I know. A car. Instead of spending millions on R&D and creative design, they have asked the global public to design the next generation of electric cars and submit a concept portfolio by 31 July.

Unilever dumped its ad agency and put up a $10k prize for new ideas to promote Peperami; 1,185 concepts were submitted, and the prize was shared between two people in London and Munich. It wasn't just about the ideas. They used the campaign to talk directly to customers and the Peperami brand got a massive boost.

Even the US government is at it. San Francisco asked city employees how to cut its $522m deficit with rewards for the leading contenders. Houston did the same, so successfully that 30 per cent of all ideas submitted were immediately put into effect.

That's big business, though, so does it work for small and medium-sized firms? The answer is a resounding Yes. The ability for a small business with little or no in-house resource to tackle surveys or market research, R&D or design projects, gives them a huge advantage.

Claire Dunning says crowdsourcing is a cost effective, realistic and more or less instant way to get to the needs, thoughts and views of your target audience, and it also provides a platform to interact and have a dialogue. It works because of the proliferation of social media.

Founder of Dunning Design and former president of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, he has used crowdsourcing for lobbying - via LinkedIn - and building a fanbase on Facebook.

How powerful a tool is this now and for the future? Dunning says you can't put a price on it. "Now there is no need - and this is the real appeal for SMEs - to engage in market research, just get in touch through LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook and have real time, two-way conversations with the people that matter."

If we're really honest here, it's only the name and the method that's new. We've been "asking the audience" for years; we've all tried suggestion boxes, attempting to engage with employees and draw on their knowledge with varying degrees of success. The difference is that in crowdsourcing, those that are contributing are doing so voluntarily, willingly, enthusiastically.

You might think crowdsourcing smacks of getting someone else to do the hard work for you, that it's the lazy option. You'd be wrong. Managing it takes time and effort. You need to ask the right questions and be able to sort the good - or ideally, great - ideas from the dross.