Guest post: Crowdsourcing is an absurd way to create a brand

“The problem is that, despite its new technology origins, crowd sourcing reinforces a rather old school view: branding is about creating logos. Further, it assumes that branding is easy and thereby requires little investment, effort or capability to deliver a result.”

Is it an old school view or simply an uneducated one? Either way, I wholeheartedly agree that crowdsourcing this type of work is not the way to go. People often see a logo and equate that with a brand as the brand, simply because it’s often the only component that is easily accessible. Joe Public doesn’t look at what the brand itself is and what it represents, let alone at a more granular level when it comes to common branding style guide elements such as photography style, colours and typefaces.

So, to Joe Public, a brand is a logo and thus he or she can come up with a “brand” (or more correctly a logotype) for a $1,000 – and of course it will be fantastic, and quite possibly developed on a cracked copy of Illustrator and Photoshop. And this too is another reason why Joe P has now entered the realm of developing a brand – simply because the digital drafting board, paper and pencil is now easily obtained without much effort and training provided by Youtube.

Then again, my nephew can also develop a website for a major brand for $750 and do it in 3 days.

Damien, poor attempt to halt the massive growth of crowd sources branding sites
That are obviously hurting your bottom line. But no points for originality.

Sites like these deliver everything that a brand agency can quicker than you can.
I have used both and I am my stakeholders could never tell the difference.

Perhaps think more like anthill magazine has when facing the digital revolution
of content consumption and start your own crowdsourcing site. You could just
Use your existing junior designers to make the logo’s after you flaff over the strategy
while riding your bike around the office. Just don’t tell the existing clients they
are paying 10 times more for the same thing.

Check out 99designs.com for your own take

I’m constantly surprised (and disappointed) that branding and identity design is periodically singled out for the a ‘money flushed down the toilet’ news story.

Why aren’t other (and more substantial) business expenditures treated in the same way by the media? When was the last time legal fees were attacked in the newspapers? Couldn’t next time a government body is taken to court offer a $1000 prize for the best legal defense?

Pedro, thanks for your comments. Actually crowd sourcing is a different marketplace to our own. We are in the business of building brands that create value for our clients and their customers. We are not in the business of selling logos by the kilo. As such, the clients who come to us come for very different reasons.

Damien let’s stick to the basics, you deliver these brands as logos don’t you? An eps or jpeg file.
Perhaps you upsell a business card too. These sites do the same thing cheaper and quicker.
And why would they be any less valuable to the client and their customers?
What are you doing that other trained design professionals around the world aren’t?

And you say the clients come to you for different reasons. Are you sure its not beacuse they don’t yet
know their is another solution available?

Why don’t you post this blog with some links to these sites on your own site if
you are so confident of your service superiority?

hmmmm… Damian, you have broken down very simply and over-generalised.

it is not as if the winning submission is chosen at random, there are criteria based on a wide range of criteria including those relating to brand. if the submissions do not meet the brief the client doesnt choose one – simple.

poor choice of creative by NSW government is not reflective of inneffectiveness of crowd-sourcing – its reflective of poor choice by NSW government!

really, there is crowd sourcing, and then their is crowd-sourcing.

it also offers an opportunity for up-and-coming graphic designers / creatives and can help bridget he gap between gaining a degree and building a career – and thats good for the entire industry.

Coca Cola and McDonald’s didn;t need brand architectures or brand planners when they created their logos. They looked at a bunch of designs and picked the one they liked. Get over yourselves, it’s not that complicated, let alone an intellectual exercise.

Arrogance. To assume the crowd who you use to source are “monkeys” – and only over priced agencies have qualified “humans” working on the brief. Bananas for Damien.

Hmm…I think there’s a bit of confusion here between “crowdsourcing” and” trying to get work done for free/less money”. There’s a difference. True crowdsourcing (or open innovation/collaborative production/whatever you want to call it) is about getting feedback from the people who interact with a brand.

The Top This TV campaign Heinz ran would be an example – they aren’t getting their next ad campaign done for less, they are finding out what their biggest fans think about Heinz – how they use it and why they love it. American Idol and P&G’s connect+develop are other great examples of crowdsourcing done right.

Thinking you can throw a logo design out to a crowd and magically have something good come back for cheap isn’t crowdsourcing, it is poor thinking. Let’s not confuse the two 🙂

Sarah you have it the wrong way around. Sites like 99designs create value
and are useful to those who interect with them. The campaigns you mention are
a rip of off true crowd sourcing and are agency hype created to supposedly
Make consumers “engage” with brands as a band daid solution to consumers simply
No longer paying attention to traditional ads

pedro is the man! 99designs is great – designbay.com also hits the nail on the head

I agree with Tristan – this is all about poor decisions from the client. Crowdsourcing can be a really powerful tool, but you need some knowledge as a client (which you also need when working with an agency).

And I would disagree that making a logo has anything to do with “creating a brand”, but that’s another story…

At the risk of sounding like a fat man at a schmorgesborg, why not have both?

Use the brand building guys if you need a big company distilled into a single graphic.

Use the online guys if you need a quick image and have a small budget.

Should we step things up a level here and look at agencynil.com
Now we are talking…put this and 99designs together and wanky
cbd bars will be empty on a friday arvo

Geez…… I thought we’d all moved into the 21st century.

Here’s a couple of good examples of crowdsourcing:

Threadless – top voted designs get printed
http://www.threadless.com

P&G Connect + Develop
http://www.pgconnectdevelop.com

Brewtopia – Brewtopia using consumers as creative resource
http://www.brewtopia.com.au

Dell Ideastorm – crowdsourcing insight
http://www.ideastorm.com/

Springspotters – identifying trends
http://www.ideastorm.com/

And there are plenty more……

Really interesting debate, and I’ve been taking this all in the in context of social media. I’m on side with Damian if we jiggle social media in place of brand – it doesn’t precisely fit grammatically but the deal is to have this kind of business approach and asessment.

Then I’m also aligned with Sarah because the big addition to the brand strategy of Damian’s is the necessary involvement of customers in your development of a social media strategy. Not necessarily agreeing with those examples as I think Pedro hit on some of the weaknesses of those campaigns. Developing the strategy is not about hitting your audience with a campaign – the customer involvement must come before anything is remotely decided about tools or campaigns.

So I think all serious business investments require a serious methodology and approach and from now own, in developing social media strategies, early and upfront customer involvement. This is empathetic to Damian’s approach.

Pedro, not sure how you view this and you might knock the stuffing out of it, but I for one don’t see a Twitter account or a Facebook page being a strategy, the same way that a logo is not a brand.

Walter Adamson @g2m
Social Media Academy, Australia
http://www.socialmedia-academy.com.au

@Walter Adamson – props for the thoughtful reply. good stuff!

Little Pedro. Your comments are ridiculous, let me tell you why. Please listen… Logos are no more to what a brand is, than clothes are to who a person is. The logo does not make the brand. Saying this, the logo is a crucial component of a brand as it must be aligned with, and must embody, brand strategy. Brand strategy, in turn, must walk hand-in-hand with business strategy. Mastering this is what the greats such as Apple, or Harley Davidson for that matter, do so well.

The problem with crowd sourcing is this. Most designers are shit (99% of them). This is despite what they think of themselves. Good designers have jobs and don’t engage in crowd sourcing. And believe me, brilliant designers who can marry ideas and cutting-edge aesthetics with skill are rare animals.

Little Pedro, the reason you find crowd sourcing so great is because you don’t own (or work) for a firm that wants to use brand (and design in general) as a competitive weapon.

this is 100 monkeys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_monkeys

You’re actually talking about INFINITE monkeys

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.....ey_theorem

which, now i think about it, undermines your entire point about crowdsourcing.

My experience and observation of the internet/digital technology is that it removes intermediaries – that is what crowdsourcing does. Are brand agencies intermediaries for their employees talents ? You bet! Do they add value ? Yes they can do, but there is no systematic approach to delivering that value – it is a happy coincidence.

Some like Damian’s company have something like a value framework but that’s a discussion for another lifetime.

The elephant in the room is that no agency ‘creates’ a brand – the customers and audiences do in response to their experiences of the product or service.

The amazing part is that the people that do this work still think that brands are stimuli – no they are responses. Great brands are the outcome of great businesses – not the other way around.

Branding governments is not the same as companies.
ROI never seems to be judged the same! But identity is a deeper conversation than the external marks we use to communicate it.

To Tony’s point, there will always be the surface-level identification that a logo serves very well. Why bother with more than your name and a giant X? So long as the name is distinctive. In that case don’t crowd-source. Use a Word template.

Unfortunately the bigger idea of competitive identity doesn’t sit neatly in the realm of design alone. And I say this while recognising that design remains the most powerful way of crystallising an organisation’s value. An “oh, i get it!!” endpoint that concludes all the interim hypothesising.

Damian’s point in all this, I believe, is that it would be a mistake to assume a logo provides the kind of voice, impact, personality and regard that is orchestrated by leading marketers.

You know what I mean. Consistency in how reps spruik their goods. A sense of place across their retail or management spaces. The kinds of organisations they do business with. Maybe subtle PR stunts that ‘correct’ public criticism from time to time.

I doubt it’s the business model or effectivity of crowd sourcing in question here. It’s the risk that business leaders start believing a microwaved meal is just as good as gourmet. If they operate in a more sophisticated context of peers and competitors (which I hope NSW does!) , they better ask more questions or look for more opportunities from their ‘brand investment’ than can come from a process that permits NO dialog, uncertain category experience and no ability to discuss the underlying, hidden ideas that can influence behavior, environments, product development or goodwill.

Easy come.
Easy go.

Crowdsourcing is the new tendering. In time to come we will see more organised groups (read businesses) put their hand up as “the crowd”. It is a sensational business evolution. Go with it people!

The only reason IBM, McDonald’s or Apple have a famous logo is because they were successful, innovative companies that grew into billion dollar enterprises. They grew because of products, innovation, management, savvy marketing — not because of the font they used on their logo.

There’s thousands of companies that go under every year that spent tens of thousands on “great design” but in the process forget about what matters: products or service, marketing & sales, and customer service.

Brands are created by the experiences people have interacting with your company – whether at trade shows, email, or through your products/services and how well you delivered them. Logos don’t make brands.

obviously Damien is doing something right to have gotten such a passionate debate going.

I agree with Damien in that when it comes to the logo and icon and site design – there really needs to be an adept understanding of what the company stands for and who it is targeting, i reckon. I guess this will vary depending on level of ambition.

but logo should not be confused with branding. to me branding is about the direction of a company and the values they execute with. the logo is to help the market uniquely identify the brand amongst the plethora of non focuses brands with boring branding.

With crowdsourcing a tagline id argue its different, coz it doesn’t require any graphics skills and therefore you can get a crowd sourcing contribution much easier. Plus if a brand really does lives in consumers heads then why not use crowdsourcing to access the perceptions and ideas in those heads?

we are intending to do just that with an upcoming branding re-launch. ie. we designed a benchmark new site and a unique, and engaging new logo but couldnt come up with a new tagline. Doh! so we’re going to open it up…and use twitter to facilitate early September.

Would you like some hard figures?

In late 2008, we decided to invite our readers to design our next cover.

To do so, we ran a competition through 99designs ($400 prize).

Over 200 entries were submitted. We then applied our editorial discretion to pick the best six.

Our readers were once again involved in the process, asked to judge which of our six top picks would be the cover.

We launched with the chosen cover and experienced a 12% retail spike.

That retail spike brought in far more than the $400 dollars spent.

And… we created a new way to involve our readers in the evolution of our company.

http://anthillonline.com/the-h.....es-global/

Crowdsourcing technologies are like news aggregators.

Remember the article, ‘Tivo thinks I’m gay’?

They are useful up to a point. Then editorial discretion (human input) is required.

BTW Pedro – i reckon if you’re not prepared to identify yourself – then sorry mater, to me your comments are not accountable and therefore not credible.

add a link to who you are then i will have a read of your comments. but til then i think your hiding being anonymity and your tone reflects this.

Disclaimer: I’m associated with designtourney.com.

We are spending a lot of time researching the commercial and ethical issues that arise from the relationship between the traditional design houses and the new crowdsourcing model. (websites like nospec really concern us as 1/2 our team is from the traditional design community)

It seems that there is definitely room for the models to coexist together… the challenge for traditional designers is to adapt to the new model or to ensure that they can communicate their additional value add to their clients.

The fact is that there are a lot of stories like James’ above… and thus the value add of crowdsourcing can’t be ignored.

The approach we take is that we need to understand and service the design community as best we can through our site… meaning developing better tools that help designers do what they love to do… design.

No major problem with crowd sourcing.

A very similar argument exists in the market research space, cheap and accessible online tools like survveymonkey allow anyone to be a market researcher, right?

In the end its not really about the tools or the process, it’s about the outcome – ie a clear understanding of the requirement should result in a quality output.

The money’s hardly in the programming, it’s in the breifing and interpretation of same.

Obviously NSW Government must have spent much time (and money) ensuring they developed a strong brief that would allow their design team (sourced from where ever) to get a deep understanding of the organisation/business and need?

Thus this logo (Waratah or Lilly) is absolutely expected, totally justifiable and highly acceptable by all stakeholders (at least the major stakeholder (Rees) believes so).

While the premise suggests anyone with some design skills can deliver – it would all depend on the quality and clarity of the briefing – sometimes this involves getting up close and personal with the client, and sometimes (as in this case) is doesn’t. And clearly the outcome for NSW Govt reflects this.

I realise that Damian is just trying to protect his business, but the weak justifications and awful marketing cliches are truly cringeworthy.

Agencies typically charge a fortune for the most basic design work and then wrap it up in bundles of industry jargon to give the little piece of artwork a complete set of new clothes from the Emporer’s wardrobe.

Truth is of course that they just have huge overheads and have to recoup the money. Typically an underling does the design work and the boss does the schmoozing and double-talk.

The web is changing the charging models for all sorts of businesses in ways that are making many established businesses very uncomfortable. The beauty of the web is that it often exposes a simple job for what it really is: simple.

Designing a logo appropriate to a company’s market is not rocket science. Millions can do it and increasingly, they will.

I agree Tim. That’s where those marketing & branding businesses have to migrate to. The trouble is too many of them are used to feeding off the simple jobs and charging astronomical fees for the most basic work.

That little snout-in-trough aspect of the business will go, and with it will go the agencies that aren’t adding real analytical value.

Designers and brand strategists take a lot of heat for defending the value of their services. Lawyers and doctors don’t get this much heat, but that’s because they operate in fields where the minimum level of competency required to operate is high and set by law. Anyone can’t just set out a shingle and start defending criminals, which means that the continuum between bad lawyers and good lawyers is relatively obscured, but there are still those who are more effective than others and price is a signal of that value.

No one dies or goes to jail because of bad branding, but it doesn’t mean that all brand strategists and designers are created equal. Like house painters or English professors or acupuncturists, we operate in a value continuum that is very wide, subjective, and murky. What we do is significant but far enough away from the bottom line that it is hard to quantify, and therefore it can be hard to know who’s any good at it. But it doesn’t mean gradations don’t exist.

Crowdsourcing seems to put a value on the entire operation, suggesting that if a logo can be had for $400, then that should be the value for the entire industry, and anyone who charges more is just covering inflated overheads. Comparably, you can get legal documents prepared for a few hundred dollars online these days. This is great if you’re looking to do a straightforward marriage license or a will. But if you’re a billionaire with multi-continent holdings and a couple estranged children, you’ll probably want some more sophisticated legal advice.

Likewise, branding. Tim’s point is well-taken. For a local small business, engaging a brand consultancy is hitting an ant with a sledgehammer. But for a large corporation with multiple business lines, haphazardly acquired subsidiaries, B2B and B2C sets of customers, an aging target demographic, a commoditization threat, a new-to-market competitor, a cannibalistic distribution network, a history of public scandals, or any of a thousand other big business issues, developing a brand is a complex endeavor integral to the success of the business. It doesn’t always have to be a large established business, either; a new brand entering a deeply saturated market with a novel, hard-to-understand business proposition could probably make a bigger initial splash with some brand help. I wouldn’t preclude the possibility that a college kid with a Wacom tablet could solve those issues for $400, but in branding, as with anything else, what you get is usually what you pay for.

To defend what we do we need to go beyond the platitude “a brand is not a logo.” It is true, but not adequately descriptive of what we do. We also have to stop holding up as examples brand magicians like Apple and Google and Virgin. These are companies run by people with exceptional cultural insight, for whom brand doesn’t need to be talked about because it is exhaled like CO2. Branding for them appears unconscious, natural, and sincere. Most companies are not like this. They are run by people with extraordinary market vision or a talent for interpersonal relationships or one really f’ing great idea that shot them to the top of their market without really knowing where to go next. These are the people who need help from people who specialize in managing the public face of the company and its interactions with others.

The fact that crowdsourcing has become prominent enough for designers to fear is a great thing. A few years back we were frustrated that companies only wanted one-way communication with their consumers and condescended to them from behind the two-way mirrors at focus groups. This is a big step, and we have to be happy that our many exhortations to break down some walls and engage in unfettered dialogue are now a reality. But there are many things I think an experienced brand consultancy will always do better than the masses. A few examples:

Challenging a brief.
A good design/strategist team can help a client see opportunities they weren’t looking for, and suggest a different brief that would help the client get where they really want to go. In the same way a decorator might steer me away from painting my living room magenta if I say I want a laid-back, elegant home, sometimes giving a client exactly what they want is a recipe for disaster. A trusted relationship with a credible, experienced consultant allows this kind of discussion to take place. A momentary encounter with a passel of consumer-designers does not.

Appealing to new audiences.
If the monetary incentive is low, crowdsourcing will draw current adorers of the brand to participate. Therefore it stands to reason that the result of a crowdsourced effort will primarily appeal to current consumers of the brand. If a company is trying to reach out to new audiences, it might luck out and find that this new audience likes their approach. But if the company has big growth plans, it would be better served with a more thought-through approach.

Brand alignment.
Distilling a brand into a logo is one thing, and it is possible that a consumer with a passion for a particular brand and a deep understanding of its essence could create a really effective logo. But figuring out how the organization practices this central organizing principle throughout the business, from how it greets people at the door to the way it handles complaints on its website to the way it spends its ad budget (meager or mighty) requires an understanding of the company’s operations from the inside, a level of access that requires confidentiality and trust.

There’s a theme here. Anything dealing with high degrees of complexity or where a relationship of trust and counter-culture thinking is required is likely to get superior treatment when handled by a specialist. Not every brand needs a big global brand consultancy just like not every bump needs a doctor. There is room for both approaches. The ascendancy of crowdsourcing does not invalidate the work of people who have spent years studying branding and culture and charge actual money to help businesses be more successful through the management of their brands.

There’s a lot of poor logic, tenuous if-then arguments and marginal analogies in that essay. As for comparing Froth Merchants to doctors, oh dear.

And what’s this college boy/teenager assumption in the crowd-sourcing argument ? I think this is a great example of how Old Media companies have a deep-rooted and often unconscious contempt for the public.

The little circle of full-time “brand strategists” are not innately superior to 100% of the public. The “crowd-sourced” person coming up with a concept may very well be a skilled academic, demographer, independent artist, journalist or one of a hundred other skilled and relevant occupations. And trying to deduce the skills, motivations and output of someone based entirely on financial reward is plainly ridiculous.

The truth that many “brand strategists” are desperately trying to obscure is that a large part of what they do is unskilled. Their main advantage is not talent, training, or brilliant insight, it is opportunity. They have positioned their business in such as a way as to intercept the perceived need of another business for a brand position.

The web is creating many new roads and pathways for companies to follow instead, most of them much cheaper. The web is revaluing this service.

I think you have an excellent point, Tim, as does Damien.

My experience in corporate environments is that people do, indeed, think that it’s simple to knock up a symbol that can deliver a range of meanings and values. What these people don’t realise is that, if those meanings and values don’t already exist in the organisation that you are delivering the symbol for, it is just a pretty picture.

The NSW government has learnt this to their detriment – they were so keen on getting a funky new image that they couldn’t even get the kind of flower they were trying to represent right. Hence, the logo becomes just another symbol of their desire to wallpaper over the serious issues with superficial tatt rather than deliver something meaningful.

Piers H-S has nailed it. Crowdsourcing is used by companies all over the world for new ideas – it is the best way to capture and distill creativity on a large scale. I think that applying this approach to an agency is a very interesting proposition. Think about it – the internet enables a discontinuous shift (outsourced creative) in a traditional conservative industry (design) that is built on an arcane apprenticeship model (creative industry careers) !

When will the design agencies realize that creating a logo is not the same as creating a brand ? They only create the brand in the sense of a stamp like the one used to brand cattle. I thought the brand debate had moved on about 15 years ago.

They should just call themselves design agencies and stop the pretence.

this is web 2.0 in action. great contributions and some good logic too.

in the end i guess no rights or wrongs (combo of art and science) – all adding to and evolving the conversation. most poignant comments I’ve read are around brand depends on ambition. i.e. if low ambition not much thought given, as opposed to high level of ambition where getting the brand ‘branded into people’s brains’, is strategically the main game.

But gee i think it would help if people would identify themselves to give context to their view points.

otherwise it’s a bit like John Laws spruiking a company, policy or idea and not saying what his interest is it. (i.e. cash for comment)

at least Damien has given context to his comment and exposing his relevant level of subjectivity.

but i guess each to their own.

There is room for both traditional brand planners that have a remitt that extends far beyond creating a logo, and there will be designers and those from the crowd sourcing community that can produce a jpeg or logo in Illustrator that fullfills a particular purpose that is no less justified than the need for a large scale corporate or product branding program.

Horses for courses.

Scale of the business, its stakeholder needs and the role of the brand in the purchase decision are significant drivers here.

The complexity goes far beyond the need for a name and a nice aesthetically pleasing design – I think such a view devalues everybody involved here.

Look at a purchase of Prada, Gucci and Chanel handbags – the brand is the main factor as to why these bags are purchased, a bag ain’t a bag for all practical purposes. And the reason people are prepared to fork out $5k or more for one is the desirability of these brands, their designs, and what they stand for and mean to people emotionally, and how they are postioned and marketed. The foundation of which is the brand strategy and its ability to influence all further touchpoints in any communictions sense.

Prada could make an identical unbranded bag for far less than $159.99, and many do, but the value is created by the brand and a signicant strategy to invest and stregthen the brand to enable them to justify the price tag. Not someting I would want to leave soley to the crowdsourcing community myself if I were creating a new visual identity system and brand name.

To say that there is no role for brand strategists and brand planners is a entirely ridiculous notion…I suppose regular people on the street or on the Internet can be account and communications planners too??

I am not suggesting that the crowd sourcing community or indeed social media should not contribute to analytics and as a source for research and insights for corporate brands and logos – there is room for that and we will no doubt see more of it – but a process needs to faciliated to harness the value these channels can create for any new purpose in a well administered analytics program.

The problem with branding (and marketing in general) is that everybody is an expert, but at the same time its practice can be very esoteric and subjective – however a contextual understanding of the broader commercial realities and thinking is required. If it were just all common sense we would’t all go to University for three years to study marketing, read everything written by Ogilvy, Jon Steel, Al Ries, Jack Trout and William Berbach, and then ply our trade for years to train, gain experience, and the knowledge to be able to coherantly tie all this together to theorise, to uncover the insights and use the thought processes that all contribute to solving business problems and deepen our understanding of a discipline that is as much art as it is science.

Anyone know anything about crowdsourced blog-responses?

Pedro – quite the firecracker!

It’s hilarious what is being discussed in the media stories about branding at the moment.

City of Melbourne is getting slammed for spending 100’s of thousands of dollars on a big time Sydney branding company to give them an ‘m’. Which quite entertainingly, a Melbourne TV station asked some deisgn studios to turn out some ideas for free and in 2 hours (half of which were redraws/re-interpretation of the new logo). So good logo, but spent too much.

Meanwhile NSW government, lead by an ex-garbologist deemed weak enough to be controlle dby factional warriors, is slammed for replacing the beloved waratah for a lotus symbol, at a cost of $4500. So cheap logo – but very bad. Booo!.

It always seems to come back to the ‘what is graphic design / branding’ style question – which always reminds me of this great video by Andrew Ashton of Studio Pip&Co in Melbourne. http://twurl.nl/uyqhc1

People happily spend money on doctors, lawyers, accountants – they understand the value added and see the symbols of authority (white coats, powdered wigs etc) – but our industry seems to be seen as superfluous or at worst dishonest. $200,000 for a logo? What?!!!! Crack out the word clip art and I’ll have a logo in a jiffy. It seems as an industry we are constantly trying to justify our existence.

I was discussing the London 2012 logo with one of my designers the other day and he actually suggested crowdsourcing would have been better (well he said ‘hold a public competition’, but in our web2.0 world it’s been renamed crowdsourcing. meh).

At first I was so flabbergasted at this idea that I couldn’t respond. But the simple fact is a logo has to convey so much in such a simple graphic – as Damian abley outlined – and getting 1000 designers to spend 1 hour each on a 1000 logos, is simply a ridiculous approach in my opinion.

Brief a team of designers, initiate a dialogue, open the organization up to those designers so they can generate insights. Look at lots of options in a collaborative way, refine chosen options, craft, craft and craft some more. Get 5 designers to spend 200 hours each and get 1 beautiful, but more importantly, APPROPRIATE logo.

As for the plumbers in the world – keep giving the brief to teenage wannabes – it’s how many of us learnt by doing as young hopeful designers, and if all those young hopefuls just work on the niternet without ever meeting a client face to face, it’s a very bad development for a profession already way too fenced off from talking to our clients.

Firstly, if people understood that a logo is one of many brand marks they would realise that changing the primary brand mark to a mark not intrinsically connected to all the other brand marks that make up a brand is a wasted effort. A logo change is tantamount to putting lipstick on the proverbial gorilla. A primary brand mark change represents a thorough revamp of a brand’s key marks. How a brand’s marks are configured indicates how the brand is positioned in the market. A brand identity constructed of interlinked and interdependent brand marks is a brand strategy made experiential.

Secondly, there is a place for crowdsourcing. It is in its infancy and not yet sophisticated enough to handle the complexities of Brand and its various types of marks. Crowdsourcing can just about handle logos. This is a suitable mechanism for a small business that needs a low cost signifier and does not yet have much equity in a brand. Brand strategies are unlikely ever to be crowdsourced and any imperative director demonstrates extreme naivety by crowdsourcing elements of their brand.

Thirdly, it’s an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters that would rewrite Shakespeare. A 100 might get you nuts.

A.

Agencies and branding consultants should be using crowdsourcing not criticising it.

The traditional approach to design and branding has many strengths, but it has two fundamental problems: 1) it is expensive and 2) it is risky. The NSW, Melbourne city, BHP and London Olympics branding programs highlight these problems. The current branding / design process is ripe for change and crowdsourcing can help deliver that change. Fixing these problems can increase the number of businesses investing in their brands and, as a result, help grow the pie for the industry.

There is no argument that other activities (outside of logo design) are important in building a brand. Damian is right – crowdsourcing a logo design cannot align a brand and organisational culture, nor can it deliver you a broader branding strategy – but no one is claiming that it can. That is up to the organisation’s leaders / marketers and, if they have one, their agency to define.

Crowdsourcing a logo or a website will work better if it is part of a broader branding program. Crowdsourcing design and branding programs are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they complement each other. Wrapping a branding program (that may include getting external help) around a crowdsourced logo project would enhance the result. It is true that many organisations will outsource only their logo design – but this does not necessarily mean they’re neglecting their brand. The reality is that many business heads and entrepreneurs will effectively create a branding strategy themselves / in-house and will outsource only the design. This is not a new trend that crowdsourcing has introduced and crowdsourcing does not portent to include branding strategy – it is simply a brilliant way to get creative design work completed.

Forward looking agencies are embracing crowdsourcing. We have number of branding consultants and digital agencies that provide strategy to clients and then use our site DesignBay to execute the design work (which is a subset of what they’re offering their client), increase their capacity and increase their margin per client. Agencies and brands alike should consider crowdsourcing as an option when creating a new brand or undertaking design work.

Here is why:

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1. CROWDSOURCING DELIVERS A BETTER RESULT
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When creating a logo or any type of design – crowdsourcing can get a better result. This has by major design projects in the past century. For example, in 1956 the Premier of NSW ran a worldwide contest to design a new building for Benelong Point with a first prize of £5000. He received 217 designs from around the world and first place was given to Joern Utzon of Denmark for what is now known as The Sydney Opera House.

Competition amongst creatives drives a better result. The Internet and crowdsourcing enables businesses of any size to run worldwide open contests and realise this benefit everyday and get the most creativity out of any budget.

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2. CROWDSOURCING REDUCES COSTS
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Crowdsourcing uses the Internet and allows you to access a diverse and low-cost pool of design talent (including freelance designers, designers moonlighting after work, Work-from-home designers, offshore designers and student designers). These designers typically don’t have premises or large marketing budgets themselves further lowering cost. Crowdsourcing eliminates the quoting step from the process, further saving designers’ time and reducing costs. Crowdsourcing can move part or all of the cost of creativity from being a fixed cost (in the form of full-time designers – whether employed by an agency or a business) to a variable cost.

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3. CROWDSOURCING REDUCES RISK
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Crowdsourcing design means you are not committed to one designer. You are mitigating the risk that your designer / agency has an off day and comes up with the London Olympics logo. You are also spending less with crowdsourcing, reducing the amount of money you’re putting at risk.

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4. CROWDSOURCING CAN HELP YOU BUILD THE NEXT NIKE
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Nike’s swoosh logo (one of the best marks ever made) was created by a student (Carolyn Davidson) in 1971 while she was still studying at Portland State University. Fantastic creativity can come from anywhere and a great source is new, hungry talent. Crowdsourcing lets you access students, recent graduates, start-up design studios (as well as seasoned designers) who as a group will deliver you multiple, creative perspectives.

In conclusion: Agencies and branding consultants should be leveraging crowdsourcing! When decision makers hear the benefits of crowdsourcing they open their wallets because they can see the benefits. Pitch a design contest to your clients, make it a point of differentation, use crowdsourcing to meet deadlines and reduce your internal costs. We do not see agencies as competitors but as clients and partners. Crowdsourcing is a natural progression for the design industry. Embrace it!

Alec Lynch
DesignBay
http://www.designbay.com

I’m surprised no-one has mentioned BBH-Labs’ experiment with having their logo crowd-sourced via Crowdspring.

They received some excellent submissions. Partly because they’re associated with one of the best Advertising agencies in the world Bartle Bogle Hegarty.

Here are the entries: http://www.crowdspring.com/pro.....o/bbh_labs

And here are some really insightful posts on the subject:
http://bbh-labs.com/crowdsourcing-continued

And all their writing on Crowdsourcing:
http://bbh-labs.com/tag/crowdsourcing

Enjoy!

i suggest having a word limit on postings. like youtube does. otherwise you get people copying and pasting their high school essays in 😉

Another way of looking at the crowdsourcing debate is that a submitting designer has a, say, 1 in 25 chance of being paid for what he or she does.

How long could even the smallest design companies last with these odds?

How could anyone make a buck and stay in business?

Or would design become a third world industry like manufacturing and call centres?

good question tony.

id say if you win a contest you get cudos and then promote it which generates direct business.

we’ll run a tagline and banner text comp via twitter with modest bounty. But the winner gets to point people to our site as example of their work.

Siting a single instance of bad crowdsourcing, and then launching into a boilerplate defense of branding and branding consultants does not qualify as making a point.

Crowdsourcing is simply a small-scale manifestation of the same principles that make democracy and capitalism work.

Just like anything else, it can be done poorly, but there is no legitimate argument against the singular truth that crowds can be great at making important decisions.

Catch up to the crowd Damian.