If ‘08 Is The Year Of The Crowd, What Does That Mean For Marketing?
Some people are predicting that 2008 will be The Year of The Crowd. In a story last month, Karlene Lukowitz from MediaPost predicted that “Crowd” would be the word of the year. Lukowitz says, “Business people love buzzwords, and none will be buzzing more than terms paired with Crowd. She says “get ready for Crowdsourcing, Crowdstorming, Crowdbursting and who knows what else.”
The Year of The Crowd hails from the term Crowdsourcing. Jeff Howe first coined the term in a June 2006 Wired Magazine article.
Mountain Dew’s latest campaign is a great example of Crowdsourcing. In November of 2007, the interactive game Dewmocracy was launched, in which users vote to determine the can graphics, color and flavor of a new Mountain Dew product to launch in 2008.
Dewmocracy (officially written by PepsiCo as DEWmocracy) is a combination of the words Dew (a nickname for Mountain Dew) and democracy. It is an interactive game on its own domain that encourages users to vote for the next flavor of Mountain Dew that will make its debut on shelves in 2008. The game features a live-action short film and 3-dimensional characters. As the player goes through the game, users will help pick every feature of a new Mountain Dew, including can graphics, color, and flavor, from five choices for each aspect.
Mountain Dew and Pepsi aren’t only using this Crowdsourcing project to engage their loyal customers in designing their next product. They are also using this as an opportunity to market the new product between now and when it is released. They are betting on the fact that the consumers that come to Dewmocracy are loyal Mountain Dew customers, or brand evangelists. They are hoping ultimately that these brand evangelists will help spread the word about the new “Dew”. Word of Mouth Marketing has proven to be one of the most effective ways to market a new product, and to build buzz.
Paul Gillin, a social media consultant and author summed up brand evangelists best in a recent article in BtoB Magazine by saying,” Customers are a low-cost and high-powered extension of your marketing team. Their words carry more credibility than any ad or promotion you produce. Thanks to the new wave of online publishing tools, they have unprecedented potential to spread the word about your brand and seed the market with their spontaneous enthusiasm.”
But Mountain Dew isn’t the only company that is using the concept of the crowd for its marketing needs. Some large companies are using “Mob Wisdom”, or the “Wisdom of the Collective” to gain unique insights from customers.
Companies are realizing that if they could listen to all of the conversations customers were having around their products, their services, and their brand online, that they could then take that marketing insight and change their business for the better.
So, 2008 isn’t only the year of the crowd. It may also be the year of the online customer community. In its predictions for 2008, Forrester projects that at least one-quarter of Fortune 100 companies will launch online customer communities this year in order to create higher levels of engagement with their customers and prospects.
Companies are listening to customer conversations by tapping into the interactions between customers in online communities, and social networks. However some companies are only having basic customer communities built on their sites, or developing simple networks or groups for social networking sites. This creates added customer engagement between customers. But an online community on a company website can also be used to increase levels of engagement between customers and the company itself.
This happens by taking those online conversations, and using analytics to really see, monitor, and track what customers concerns, wants and needs are. Then, you are effectively using the crowd to help shape your company.
This type of Crowd Marketing has been described as many things so far. In a Chicago Tribune article from November entitled” You Talk, They hear on the Web,” Deborah Schultz called this emerging social practice Conversational Marketing.. Schultz consults on Social Media Strategies for Proctor & Gamble.
One of LaunchSquad’s clients is now using this Wisdom of the Collective to help provide companies with unique marketing information about their customers. Networked Insights allows companies to listen to conversations around a brand and tap into these interactions. This provides companies with actionable data they can then use strategically.
Networked Insights is currently working with The Guild and (The ArtfulHome.com), a marketplace for artists and collectors.
The Guild has been using Networked Insights for a little over three months and has completely shifted how they are strategizing in 2008 due to insights gained directly from their customers. The Guild realized that their customers were primarily buying products with interior design in mind. They were not aware of the scope and importance of interior design, and have now shifted their business priorities in the upcoming year.
Paul Gillin summed up this new type of marketing quite well by saying in a recent piece, “Your best product and marketing consultants may be out there right now, for free, waiting to help you. All you need to do is let them.”
Networked Insights and the Guild are a perfect example of this savvy interaction. What a way to start off the Year of the Crowd.
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