There’s a tendency to believe that something that works well for one thing will probably work just as well for the next. There’s also a tendency for that belief not to hold up too well in practice – which is why we boil oatmeal and fry pancakes.
Take crowdsourcing, which clearly is an effective tool for creating and refining computer applications and web tools (yes, we’re linking out to Wikipedia on this for a reason). And it appears to work well for other problem-solving oriented tasks. There’s a lot of promise there, which is great.
But there’s a trend developing toward the use of crowdsourcing to create and develop brands. That can work brilliantly if it’s done right. And if it isn’t, well, it could hold up like boiled pancake.

Because here’s the secret of crowdsourcing brands: It’s really just an extension of what those of us in the business have been doing all along. The way you build a successful brand identity and create successful brand strategies is to keep your eye on what’s going on in the world and work your creatives around it. That means everyone participating in a culture is contributing to the creation of every brand you put out into it. Crowdsourcing brings more tuned ears into the mix – giving more professionals input into the process – but it doesn’t really expand the number of voices heard.
So what’s dangerous about that? Nothing. If you’ve got someone running the show who knows not only how to find the best in what the process produces but who has a stake in the success of the branding effort – which is to say a stake in the long-term success of you and your business.
That’s not going to happen if you think you can do it yourself – you know, cast about, find a bunch of people who’ll work on spec and get yourself a brand on the cheap. You’ve got to have someone working with you on strategy, someone who’ll see the process of building your brand through to the end.
You might get lucky and someone might come up with something you think is neat – maybe something that truly is pretty neat. But what does it mean? What’s the strategy behind what you’ve got? What makes you feel relatively sure what you get is going to succeed?
And where in the crowdsourced brand is the accountability? What if the ID or brand building strategy that looked neat at first falls flat? No one has any reason to care if you make it. You can start crowdsourcing your turnaround strategy – if you have the time. Otherwise, you’re sunk.
Crowdsourcing is like anything else. It’s has to be done right. And right when it comes to your brand, your business, is a strategic partner who can see what’s up ahead and help you position your brand to continue to succeed, a pro to wrangle the crowd. That’s how you do it – if you want to win.