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A number of these aren’t crowdsourcing examples, just simple surveys and market research. Gathering people’s opinions or suggestions isn’t crowdsourcing. The White House, Mountain Dew, HTC, TechCrunch, etc. aren’t examples of crowdsourcing.
Among those that ARE crowdsourcing examples:
Threadless: Much like a democratic vote, all a contributor needs is a sizable social network to support him or her, and the scales will be quickly tipped in their favor, whether or not those voters will actually buy the shirt or not. This happened in the past on a similar shirt site (Design By Humans), when one of the contestants was a member of a specific racial minority. He won the $10,000. A similar event can happen with an organized effort by unscrupulous groups. The votes cost nothing after all, and if they stand to win $10,000, it would be ridicolously easy for them to manipulate the voting process. If captchas can be broken through porn baits, free votes would be child’s play. This is the internet after all.
Digg: Yes, the winnders get $1000, and everyone else gets nothing. Even if you spent 10 or 100 hours on your submission, you don’t receive any payment. Could you imagine 100 doctors giving their consultation to a single patient case and letting that patient decide which one they “prefer”? That’s the same level of educated (/sarcasm) choice that is being given to those who run crowdsourcing gigs.
Unilever / Doritos: Same thing above. Winner gets cash, the rest get nothing. This is why the very best creatives, designers, heck, professionals, are never part of these “crowdsourcing” contests. As if those judging would know more than them regarding their field, which they have been practicing for years.
Ad infinitum throughout crowdsourcing.
The story remains the same: if you want true, professional-quality work. You speak to a professional. If you want amateur, most likely ineffective, I-do-this-as-a-hobby-quality work, then you crowdsource.
You get what you pay for after all.
Threadless is indeed a great example of crowdsourcing at work and that’s why they got mentioned in the infographic.
Regarding the Unilever/Doritos example, the ad generated by crowdsourcing project turned out to be more popular & more memorable than all the ads created by all these “professional agencies” on Madison Avenue. While occasionally crowdsourcing can go astray, as with Kraft’s iSnack 2.0 naming project, the crowd is correct more often than not.
For example, on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, the “Ask the Audience” has a 91% accuracy vs. “Call A Friend” which has a 60% accuracy. Reaching out the masses is often times much more effective than reaching out a single expert.
As is the case with those logos that were meant to be for the “United States of Europe?”
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2010/05/29/a-flag-for-the-united-states-of-europe/
Hideous and horrid. All of them. The work of 9 year olds I would assume.
You think Unilever / Doritos was successful? What about Weiden + Kennedy’s Old Spice?
How much did the Unilever / Doritos ads generate in SALES? Not exposure, views, or clicks, but SALES.
Weiden + Kennedy’s Old Spice generated an increase of more than 300% in real world sales. That’s what the work of a “professional agency” can accomplish. All crowdsourcing can do is create artificial hype, but hype does not guarantee sales.
“Professional Agencies” as you so snarkily quoted, are professional for a reason: they have decades of experience, they are the best in the field, they are tremendously passionate about the work they do and the results they create, and they understand the fundamentals of how to approach, analyze, and solve the problems presented to them by their clients.
Crowdsourcing means not taking the time to properly solve a problem. Crowdsourcing means taking the cheap-way-out. Crowdsourcing is a band-aid.
Do you know what a crowdsourced answer to a real business problem looks like?
These:
http://www.kiwipulse.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/motorola-gps2.jpg
http://www.kiwipulse.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/motorola-gps3.jpg
Hell, why even use a metaphor? Just look at the submissions in this site. Completely amateur.
Do you know what professional results look like?
http://www.cgstudionyc.com/identities
That’s just one “professional” (as you so loving put it) firm, and some of their work.
How often did they get those wrong? Hmmmm? Compared to the 30+ submissions per contest on 99Designs, where 99.9% to 100% of them are sub-par, shallow, or copied?
If Crowdsourcing is so great, then why does Apple have a closed team of designers led by Jonathan Ive? Do you know why?
Because the difference between “professional” experts and regular people is VISION. Real creative designers, such as Jonathan Ive, Michael Bierut and everyone at Pentagram, and world-class Fashion and Furniture designers, all have VISION. They think out of the box, and they can see what can be done. They have this vision.
Ordinary people don’t have this. What they know, what they find “good”, is merely what they SEE, what they’re FAMILIAR with, and what they experience. They can’t see the possibilities and potential true creatives can see.
Crowdsourcing and creativity don’t mix. Creativity requires insight, intelligence, and vision. None of which are present in mobs. All you’ll get from mobs in the end are ripped/copied, recycled, or sub-standard ideas and execution, with little to no knowledge of the company, it’s culture, and the different mediums and their differences.
Ever heard the negative term “designed by a committee?” THAT is crowdsourcing.
As I said: you get what you pay for.
I’m trying to stop laughing long enough to jump in and congratulate XL. In these few short posts, he has firmly established himself as the poster child for all that it wrong with “Professional” design firms and why sites like 99Designs just may emerge as the future dominant paradigm.
I will speak from the perspective of the client. I spent more that a decade working for a large company that creates products and services under more than 20 global brands. While at that company I had the opportunity to work directly with many “professional” design firms in various projects across different customer segments and geographic regions.
It was a terrible experience because most of these designers (luckily not all…) were as arrogant, condescending, and clueless as XL. It was really sad to watch as the company spent tens of thousands of dollars to work with a “professional” firm only to discover that these so called professionals constantly refused to take direction, didn’t incorporate feedback, and generally treated us with a “well you just don’t understand design so you can’t appreciate how great this design really is” attitude. Oh…and you are just kidding yourself if you think the pros don’t steal ideas, create cheap knock-offs of other designs, etc. Been there, seen that too many times.
We would have killed to have an option like 99Designs back in those days!
Since leaving that company I have launched a handful of small startups and will tell you that the way many “professional” design firms treat small companies is despicable. I used the pros with my first two startups – based on those experiences I walked away from them and I pray I’ll never have see any of them again.
First, 99% of the “professional” companies will not take your call unless you’re an established company with an existing brand and want to spend > $20k.
The remaining 1% that will consider you as a client often pull a good old fashioned bait-and-switch on you to take the little money you do have. It looks a lot like this. They welcome you very nicely and make you feel like a million dollar client. They talk up their awards, large brand clients, expert staff, state-of-the-art facilities, etc. in order to seal the deal. Once you sign the agreement, though, you realize you’ve been swindled because the “designer” they assign to you is a kid still working his way through school. No experience, no talent, no resources, no communication skills, etc.
In the end I spent way too much money to be treated like a clueless noob by companies who stuck me with inexperienced designers who didn’t give me what I asked for, didn’t deliver the quality I expected, ignored my suggestions, and were as condescending as good ‘ol XL here…
“hey if you don’t get how great this design is the you just don’t understand good design. Now pay me so I can go ignore and talk down to next sucker we’re over charging for the work of a glorified intern…”
You don’t have to like 99Designs or crowdsourcing XL but it will certainly be the wave of the future unless self-important, arrogant, condescending, elitists like yourself wake up and realize that you are the EMPLOYEE in these relationships.
I’ve had a great experience working with 99Designs because here the CLIENT is considered important. The designers here work hard. They actually take direction and incorporate feedback. And not once have I been told I don’t “get it” because I lack VISION about my own product.
Design, like art, is subjective and you’ll always have the elitist snobs who try to beat others down to make themselves feel important. But now thanks to 99Designs I no longer have to pay them to do it!
It’s help many jobless designers but in other side it’s create a new slavery model. The winner’s amounts is less than the others who are already working but not getting paid and it means that they are working for nothing, just wasting a time. Take a survey! I believe that there are many designers who already joined a hundred of contest but did not win at all.
Thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of this business model, it’s just needs more improvement to solve the problems above.
XL, while I agree that the crowdsourcing way of doing business is pretty ruthless and doesn’t justly reward all designer’s hard work, I have to point out a few benefits from the point of view of the designer. As a creative myself, I baulk at the idea of marketing myself or my business. I don’t know anything about marketing and it hurts my brain thinking about it, sites like 99designs aren’t a way to make a living if you’re a designer, but are a good way to dip into certain companies consciousness, particularly if you have a good idea for their contest, and the fact that there are so many amateurs operating on 99designs should mean you stand more chance of being successful.
One thing I use 99designs for is to improve certain areas of my portfolio. If there are certain types of jobs I’m just not getting through my business I will find them on 99 (if I win the contest it’s a bonus) and hopefully this will improve my chances of getting this kind of work in the future.
Finally, I’d say that for the amateur designers, crowdsourcing is a good way to cut your teeth as a designer. For those amateurs that stick at it, they will constantly learn and improve. It’s certainly cheaper than going to university.
As a designers you either agree with the process and get involved or you don’t.
Well said Peter – I am glad you are getting some value from the site.
Just let me know how I can improve your experience.
Cheers,
Jason Aiken
Community Director
99designs
It is very funny indeed for a company or business entity to make consumers feel like they are contributing to they’re overall environment. When you look at this in the scheme of things, the company is the only thing that is actually profiting from this venture. look at the poster you are parading around, COMPANY OWNS AND PROFITS, where do the so-called designers fit in? this site is obviously about exploiting people who own software, and have an idea but they are most of the time uneducated designers creating and flooding the world with more and more bad quote designers. real graphic designers know better and for those who are aspiring graphic designers you are giving away your ideas that you could profit from yourself, 5 times over the miniscule amount they are paying you to exploit your ideas.99designs is just a sweat shop labor camp who can’t create or think up they’re own ideas and exploit uneducated or people who don’t understand exactly it is that you are doing.
I’ve heard both sides of the arguements and they are both right and wrong at the same time. Finding a graphic design team to do a logo is probably the most painful process you can go through because you pay for bad logos until they come up wth one that fits your liking or they may never come up with the design you want. But you have to pay for all those hours to come up with a wrong answer. What if another firm had the perfect fit for you but because you have to go with one firm at a time, you never get those results. Each firm is different and each firm will produce completely different results.
There is no guarentee of success. No agency can promise you on getting that perfect winning design. I’ve seen companies pay out millions of dollars for a logo they end up ditching a year later.
In many other professions, it is expected you put a bid in for work. Those bids take hours of work to produce. The amount of work to produce a building design, or advertising campaign, etc. why should graphic design be any different?
So far in my experience, crowdsourcing has produced amazing results while hiring the “professional”firm has gotten a lot of wasted money.
I have to agree with XL. Crowdsourcing is the politics of design and anyone with a half decent insight into the Design Process knows that putting an idea on a page/wall/beer coaster involves more than ticking all the right boxes with the “crowd”. It involves concept, execution, presentation and a whole lot of commitment by the designer in selling the idea too.
As Paul Gauguin put succinctly : There is always a heavy demand for MEDIOCRITY. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.
(I might add here 99Designs concept of BLIND competitions demonstrates the fact… number of competitions and prize money for web design has fallen steeply as a direct result. If you truly understood ‘crowdsourcing’ you would understand that viewing “concepts” is meaningless… it remains in the arena of commitment and good communications that lifts a design out of the ordinary – and they are shared responsibilities – and should not at the behest of a lazy or ignorant CH.
My point – to believe a better solution is one that relies on “crowdsourcing” would be the equivalent to imagining all great ideas are drawn on a serviette over a long lunch.
There is one comment in particular I’d like to share here.
Steve Douglas: Shale, I see spec and design contests as an industry issue – relevant to designers, buyers of design and yes, design firms.
The argument “well, some people do it, and they’re not being forced to” has no bearing on whether anything is good, effective or productive. It’s actually a classic case of the bandwagon or “Argumentum ad populum” logical fallacy – “the mere fact that a belief is widely held is not necessarily a guarantee that the belief is correct”. Lots of people smoke, nobody’s forcing them to, but no-one would use that argument as being illustrative that smoking isn’t harmful to the individual or society itself. The numbers of people participating on spec is, to be blunt, irrelevant.
I’m not sure why expressing a view that YOU should get paid for YOUR work is whining, but no mind. When talking to other designers who participate in spec, let me say this – to a person, they’d ALL prefer to be paid for their work. They’d rather get paid for EVERY contest or spec offering they enter. None of them, and I do mean NONE, actually WANT to give their time or talents away for free. They participate for a myriad of reasons, ranging from desperation to not being aware of alternatives, to the honest belief that they will somehow manage to make a decent living with design contest winnings (most find out rather quickly that they won’t). Unless you are the lone ‘professional’ designer who prefers not getting paid for your services, we probably agree on that one basic premise. Accordingly, I’m not sure how my stance could be determined as “whining”.
In terms of Crowdspring, I don’t want to dwell too long on them specifically, but as you brought them to the table – their website is 100% set up for the abuse of designers, many times as the hands of small business people who aren’t even aware they’re taking liberties. I don’t give a tinker’s toss about how much Crowdspring charges – that’s never been an issue of mine – my issue had always been that designers are exploited on sites like Crowdspring (and being exploited voluntarily has no bearing on whether something is exploitative or not), often by clients hoping to get ‘more for less’ while actually running a very high risk of obtaining inferior design work. Or worse. The vast majority of work on Crowdspring is, to be charitable, amateur (shouldn’t be surprising – design by amateurs is one of Crowdspring’s selling points to attract, well, amateur designers). By the way, this isn’t my opinion, but the published opinion of people who’ve reviewed CS services POSITIVELY on their blogs after running contests. The amount of copied art and stock artwork (submitted as logos) is astonishing. Again, don’t take MY word for this. Read Crowdspring’s own forums for complaints by designers who are otherwise quite happy tinkering around on the so-called “community”.
In terms of what Crowdspring does and the client-designer interaction, I must disagree. Pretty strongly too. The ‘buyers’ NEVER listen to the designer’s suggestions, even when told that what they’ve requested isn’t going to work (especially from a technical POV). All communication is FROM the buyer to the designer, never the other way around. Whatever communication from the designers to the client is usually the “yes sir, no sir – I await your next command, sir” variety. When utilizing people who are supposedly knowledgeable in their craft, the buyers never utilize that portion of the designers’ skillset. Their knowledge and/or experience. It’s akin to me taking my car to a mechanic and ignoring them completely when they tell me my wheels are going to fall off. And that, by the way, is if the ‘buyers’ communicate at all. Read the Crowdspring forum and read how designers carp that the lack of communication is a real hindrance to many contests. The management of Crowdspring have even taken to encouraging communication, suggesting that active participation means more entries. There’s lots more issues we could discuss, but rather than turn this into a Crowdspring-bashing thread, let’s leave it for another day.
In terms of my personal motivations, I’ve always been pretty pragmatic when it comes to business, so If I honestly believed that a service like Crowdspring was good for designers, good for clients, good for the industry (and profitable to boot) I’d be busy setting up my own logo design platform rather than blathering on some blog. I run a small design shop (and have so since 1996), staffed by people who have extensive backgrounds in design and online marketing, so converting my custom shop to a so-called design “crowdsourcing” platform would be a relatively easy transition. Accordingly, “if I were only weighing in on how it affects (ME)” and thought spec sites were a step forward, I’d have launched a logo design contest site years ago, and rather than debating with you on a blog, I’d be inviting you to come work on my site, supplying my ‘buyers’ with your artwork, for free. Which, apparently, you’d be quite happy to do.
Alas, I DO believe that spec sites like Crowdspring are exploitative, harmful for designers and a second-rate solution for clients. I also have to live with myself and would never expect you (or any other designer for that matter) to work for me without payment. Old school? Maybe. A Dinosaur? Perhaps. Whiner? Hardly. Continuing on my personal angle, I’d also like to point out that not once have I EVER suggested that people hire my firm rather than employ Crowdspring or another spec solution. Rather, I’ve suggested that spec contests are not terribly effective (my blog contains a myriad of evidence) and that design buyers have a ton of OTHER alternatives, ranging from small design shops to independent freelancers. As there’s nothing in your comment to indicate that I’m incorrect, I’ll stick by that stance.
I notice you close with the old “evolve or die” (or in your case, “swim or get our of the way”) chestnut. Not the first time anyone who’s been online for a while has heard that. Remember spam e-mail? When it first hit the scene back in the mid-nineties, the exact same rationale and arguments were used by the Direct Marketing associations. People complaining about spam were called dinosaurs. The JHD (Just Hit Delete) folks told those of us who hated our e-mail accounts being saturated with porn and pharma junk that we were “whining”, and trying to stand in the way of people getting “great money saving offers”. Spam e-mail was actually defended as being a positive thing for people getting it, as well as the small companies who couldn’t afford traditional advertising, who had started using it to deliver their message. Fast forward 15 years and spam e-mail accounts for over 80% of ALL Internet traffic, costs the world-wide economy billions and is a major headache for anyone trying to do anything online, from sending pics of the grand kids to parents, to running an online shopping business. This idea that all business models made possible by technology are positive is rubbish. Use of technology is what you “can do”. That needs to be tempered by what you “should do”. In terms of your comment “it’s the way things are”, and continuing with our analogy, the same can be said of spam. Are we better off because of it? Hardly.
Excellent blog,
Creative blog with nice skill, A custom logo design gives small businesses a visual illustration of their business to look at and keep themselves motivated and inspired.
Thanks for this kind of nice sharing.
Power of crowdsourcing.. I like it :)
I see both sides of the argument, but believe that if a market is flawed it finds a new solution. Crowdsourcing creativity, the way it is today, may not be the answer, but i believe a better business model for both, the artist and client, will emerge.
check out agencykillers.com, a directory of companies giving madison ave a run for their money.
Hi!
I was going through the blog…and read what Paul and Simon had to say…I kind of dont agree with some of the things…Every specilization thinks that it ‘has this unique set of skills that can be commented or improved by only their ‘own’. Which need not necessarily be the case…Some of the greatest inventions in the world, have come from people who dont belong a particular faculty, but were able to think differently…
Crowd is not allways mediocrity…..It almost sounds like a Bostom Brahmin statement…..
We at EurekaOnDemand are doing just that …trying to get ordinary people to help solve organizational problems..
Regards
Mouli
Este fue un buen artículo para leer, gracias por compartirlo.