Crowdsourcing is Spreading Like Wildfire. Creativity May Get Commoditized. Seriously.

Here's a great post from fellow CP+Ber Colin Drummond:

Only the latest of many, many examples.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. OK, if you don’t want to be afraid, at least understand how big this is. The reason it’s spreading is because it’s working. Sure, you have to sift through a lot of the crappy ideas you get, but there are some good ones in there. Actually, not just good ideas, REALLY good ideas.

Creativity really does look like it could get commoditized. The great democratic idea of our business - that everyone is creative –is becoming very real, very fast. So, the big question is: what left in our business will not be a commodity? What do you think?

Comments

[Ed Cotton]

It can certainly happen- Unilever just moved its Pepperami account in the UK from Lowe to the consumer...However, it's not as easy as it sounds...It needs good production skills, the right incentives and the right brand.

[Mason Poe]

Perhaps it's more analogous to ask what effect American Idol has on the music industry. Sure it's a popular show but does it devalue the role a musician? Not at all, if anything it has help to promote people who otherwise would not be involved in the industry.

I have to think the same is true with 'creativity' - or working in advertising / marketing / whatever. The people who really enjoy this stuff will throw themselves and their ideas at insane problems and deadlines.

At the same time, thinking of an execution is really the fun part. The harder part and the craft, comes in how to strategically position an idea and how to sell that idea into an organization.

We may ultimately be moving into a curation economy, where the value is found not in having the idea but in directing groups or recognizing brilliance. This sounds pretty much like the traditional role of decent Creative Director. In this case, even with the ability to cattle call talent, you still need Simon Cowell to give the thumbs up or down.

[Suzanne Lainson]

I'm anticipating the same thing in music.

There are already lots of experiments with fans mixing tracks and submitting them back to the artist. But I think it will move beyond that as the bands/artists become conductors of their fans.

The Amanda Palmer model, where she creates on and off-line events for her fans, will be expanded so that fans will expect to be actively engaged at every show. Each performance will be a community effort of some sort. So a different set of skills will be expected for music stars.

In other words, music could also move toward a "curation economy."

[John Winsor]

I love this idea about of the curated economy as a possible future of crowdsourcing. And agree with Ed that it's going to take a while to develop.

[Bruce DeBoer]

Curation is one way to look at it and I think you hit on the answer in an earlier post: every crowd needs an editor.

Aesthetic judgment simply can't be commiditized. The wisdom of crowds does not extend to aesthetic judgment.

May I also propose that we aren't turning creativity into a commodity but rather the creative product that some people produce.

In reality, If your creative product is a commodity, it's not that creative. Access to crowds - wider creative bandwidth - has upped the competition and proven that certain aspects of business (logos for example) aren't as valuable as we once thought, the laws of scarcity have proven otherwise.

However, true innovation (the result of creativity) is more important than ever.