[Crowd Leader: Neil Perry] What’s Next for Crowdsourcing? Quality is Job 1!

• Marek Piepers

Remember that catchy TV ad jingle from our friends at Ford Motor Company back in the 1980s?  “Quality is Job One” was the tagline and it would be a very suitable anthem for those of us directly involved with crowdsourcing in 2012.  While there has been a lot of excitement and speculation about what might be next for crowdsourcing, none of this forward-looking conversation matters if quality isn’t in-place and the #1 priority for all of us.

Recent months and years have been exciting for the world of crowdsourcing, yet a persistent criticism of crowdsourcing continues to focus on the topic of quality.  Detractors of crowdsourcing claim (and sometimes justifiably so) that quality can be a casualty of crowdsourcing processes.  At the same time, more internationally known brands, agencies and other organizations are coming to rely upon crowdsourcing as a cost-effective and efficient way to get great work done quickly.  So where does that leave us today?

Long story short, we are at a true inflection point, but I am encouraged by what I see in the marketplace:  For example, the idea of broadcasting a crowdsourced TV ad during the Super Bowl would have been unthinkable just a decade ago, before Doritos made a visible splash with its million-dollar award that brought crowdsourcing to the big game for the first time in 2006.  Yet in 2012 more than a half-dozen ads broadcast on Super Sunday were developed and produced via crowdsourcing and without the pull or novelty of a million-dollar pot of gold.  This is just one measure, as every day there are countless other creative works hitting the marketplace that can attest to the strides crowdsourcing has made. 

There seems to be a growing realization that crowdsourcing isn’t just about building and claiming the biggest crowd possible. As much as anything, it’s really about providing clients and customers with a high-quality product and experience.  This year alone, we’ve seen several crowdsourcing firms develop invite-based offerings to complement their ‘traditional’ open assignments, and we believe the future is bright for both of these approaches to crowdsourcing.  Also, we’ve seen an improved focus across the industry on client and project management, two important steps to ensuring that clients are kept in-the-loop and that projects are being managed effectively – both of which are especially important when dealing with large open assignments.

So while the trends are positive, I urge everyone in the crowdsourcing space to keep eyes-on-the-prize when it comes to quality.  A few basic tips:

1. Have an established process in-place and don’t take shortcuts: Crowdsourcing’s detractors love to focus on instances in which crowdsourcing companies skip basic steps for the sake of saving time or budget.   A lot of people out there don’t realize that crowdsourcing assignments can and do involve quality-focused stages such as creating creative briefs, researching effectiveness in the process of finalizing choices, and doing post-production work to ensure that the final product really is up-to-par from a quality standpoint.
2. Be strategic: Ask your clients how what you’re doing will fit into the broader picture of their organization’s overall objectives.  Better yet, make recommendations as to how crowdsourcing can add value to this very factor!
3. Maintain open lines of communication throughout a crowdsourcing assignment: This sounds obvious, but is critical.  Keep your clients updated on day-to-day progress, seek their input when needed, and be open to their feedback along the way – as it will keep you and your crowdsourced community more focused on the work at-hand.  Longer-term, it will also build your trust with the client and greatly increase the chances of their coming back to crowdsourcing in the future.
4. Empower your community to keep growing: Beyond financial incentives, provide ways for your community members to help each other or to exchange ideas.  Additionally, provide professional development opportunities and benchmarks so that all of your community members –not just the ones chosen for a specific assignment- can have positive experiences and learn from being a part of your community.

These are heady times for crowdsourcing, and now is not the time to coast.  What we as an industry do now and in the coming months will go a long way toward determining if crowdsourcing will be seen as a long-term and viable way to deliver quality.  We can and should have a ton of conversations about what’s next for crowdsourcing, but if quality isn’t a central element, these conversations won’t matter.

Where do you stand on crowdsourcing and quality?  Let us know in the comments below.