Not all crowds are mad

‘Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds’, first published in 1841, doesn’t paint a very flattering picture of crowds. It’s one of the most influential (and insightful) reviews of the irrational and rather stupid things that people do when swept up in speculative fever.

No doubt crowds still do very silly things (Mackay’s book is cited by some as the best ever written about market psychology). But recent decades have seen a more favourable view of the ‘knowledge of the crowd’ emerge – and recent years have seen that idea taken up in a big way by big business.

Companies are clamouring to hear your ideas – Which of these do you like best? What can we do to make your life easier? Help us design a new product!  Of course, not all are simply mining the public for information to help sales with no wider benefits; many see crowdsourcing as a way to do some good for the world and for the bottom line.

GE’s Ecomagination is perhaps one of the best established and best loved – a forum for imagination and innovation to create sustainable solutions to today’s environmental challenges, with the incentive that GE might just make your idea reality.

Ecomagination is huge. At the other end of the scale (but growing fast) are companies like Threadless – a T-shirt manufacturer that asks its online community of over a million members (growing by 20,000 each month) to vote for their favourite T-shift design out the 1000 that members posted that week. With minimal waste, 200% annual growth and revenues of over $30m, Threadless is demonstrating that a crowdsourced, on-demand model is good for the bottom line and its environmental footprint.
New crowdsourcing initiatives have flowed this year. We’ve had Heineken launching its IdeasBrewery, Tetra Pak’s second-phase renewable idea, Sainsbury’s asking for help to engage consumers in its ‘Love your Leftovers’ and ‘Million Meals’ campaigns, and Unilever’s Sustainable Living Lab, to name but a few. There are also closed communities sharing ideas - we helped Orange set up one of innovators, NGOs and tech experts to help us develop the detail behind the DoSomeGood app.

What’s driving this explosion in co-creation? Writing in the Guardian, Phil Drew offers some interesting analysis, highlighting crowdsourcing as a way to build new partnerships, to engage those causing the problem (consumers) as part of the solution, and as a new way to manage brand reputation: boosting opinions of a company by enabling consumers to shape its future.

But I think the crowdsource revolution is also a natural response to an age of social media. Corporate communications aren’t one-way any more. You’re part of a big conversation, whether you like it all not, and that has real implications for how you communicate what you as a business are all about. Yes, that opens up questions about reputational risk (what do you say? How do you say it? Who says it? What happens when something goes wrong?) but it’s also about opportunity. A rosy opportunity to show that your brand stands for something good, and it wants its fans to help it do it. While the internet is with us, co-creation will grow. Welcome to the world of crowdsourcing for good.

Measuring consumer perceptions, and what businesses can learn from it

Whilst we've always known that bad behaviour can effect consumer attitudes, it's still interesting to see just how much. And even more so when they can be measured so accurately by new technologies and tools.

Last month it emerged that Starbucks paid no corporation tax in the UK over the past year, despite making sales of almost £400 million. When exposed, it was met with public outrage, with newspapers condemning the behaviour, governments calling them to question and interest groups planning large protests. Whilst these groups have always shouted the loudest, it's perhaps more interesting to see how the alleged tax avoidance fared  in the eyes of the common consumer.

Research from social media agency, Yomego, & research company, YouGov, was able to shed some light on this matter. Yomego found that the popularity of Starbucks fell drastically from October to November, with 95% of comments on social media containing references to the tax issue. And YouGov's BrandIndex showed similar results. Buzz, which looks at whether people are hearing positive or negative news about the brand, found that (Starbucks’) scores dropped from 0 to -25 in October, and brand perception scores were also shown to fall from +1 to -11. The data therefore presents a picture of a consumer group that also cares about, and actively condones, this sort of behaviour.

As we see more stories like this appear, with measurement tools clearly showing the effect on brands, it’s only a matter of time before we see businesses realise the importance of meeting society’s expectations as key to successful enterprise.

Be innovative with your assets

It's great to see more companies thinking innovatively about what responsibility means. For businesses, responsibility is all about recognising the opportunity in business assets - to be a powerful tool to better the world and spread positive messages.

This week we see Coca-Cola showing it understands what this means, as it has replaced its corporate website with a dynamic digital magazine that showcases universally important topics, social causes and company news.

After realising that its corporate website was its most trafficked property, Coca-Cola chose to think differently about what it did with it. It recognised the responsibility associated with being a media owner, and saw an opportunity to leverage the website to engage and educate its visitors.

Coca-Cola's approach is something other businesses can really learn from. With some creative insight and thought, there are ways in which even the most unlikely of assets can be turned into a tool to drive social and commercial value.