Branding actually goes back thousands of years but we associate the word “branding” with stamping a hot iron logo on the rear end of a cow. This would brand the cow and claim it as a property of a certain rancher. In the old West, before there were fences that kept them in a certain area, cattle would wander all over the place in search of food. This became the only real way to designate whose cow was whose.

Branding Cattle was the only way to claim them as property

In our modern era we are very familiar with brand names such as McDonald’s, Nokia, Samsung, Coca-Cola, and thousands of others that occupy a specific little niche in our brain. Each one of these brands represent a specific product or service that we think about. There’s even a website that shows the top 100 brands of any given year and it’s a fascinating study.

Companies large and small all have a brand related to them. But a brand is not a logo or a corporate trademark, it’s “a gut feeling in the mind of the consumer*”. It’s what a person perceives the company to be which may be far different than what the company wants them to think they are.

If you want someone to do work on your furnace or air conditioner, you already have someone in mind. If you want to go to a bakery and get a delicious treat, you almost certainly have a place in mind. The same is true with just about anything else in our society.

It’s also true with individuals. You yourself have an aura or brand associated with you and what people think of you, or have a gut feeling about you. Every person that knows you has already categorized you as to who you are, your personality, your likes and dislikes, the things they don’t like about you, the reasons they would call you an invite you to a movie or call someone else, the type of car you drive, etc. etc. etc.

If you can narrow down the essence of who you are to one word, what would that be? Think about this for a moment. It’s very important. It may not be exactly who you are at the moment because you may be a lot of things to a lot of different people but when it comes to personal Branding, you need to think about occupying a single word in a person’s mind.

If I tell you to think of your favorite car-what is it? If I tell you to think about your favorite color, what is that? The same is true with your favorite movie, your favorite song, your favorite software program, your favorite tires, favorite Chinese food place, favorite vacation spot, etc.

If you can work and spend your entire marketing efforts on trying to occupy a single word in people’s minds, you will become very successful. The key is though you cannot occupy more than one word. Someone will always dominate a single word and it isn’t you, if someone else.

Many of these principles were taught to me by Diane Diaz and Bret L. Simmons and I have to give them credit for how they have affected my life with this. It was kind of an epiphany to wake up one morning and realize I was on the wrong track. I was not focused on what was most important to me and what was the one word that I wanted to occupy people’s minds.

Bret said that his single word is “leadership”. For me the word is “inspiration“. My goal now is:

To inspire People, Leaders and Companies to be the Best that they can be and to have a Positive Influence in the World.

I really can’t think of a better thing that I could be doing something that fits in with my personality and personal desires.

This epiphany is so revealing and freeing to me. I don’t have to be anything more than inspirational. I don’t have to be perfect, I don’t have to know everything about everything, I just need to work on being the most inspirational person that I can be.

You have got to look inside yourself to see what single word you would like to build your life around. Maybe its decisiveness, management, loving, support, fun, humor, pioneering, strength, or a million other terms. It really doesn’t matter as long as it’s important to you. No matter what principle you want to base your life around, the vast majority of the world can use you.

They don’t know where they’re going and if you do, you’re way ahead of the rest of them.

Start right now and decide what word describes you and what your personal brand should be. The go out and be it!

(*The Brand Gap, Marty Neumeier)

Initiated from a discussion at FullSail.edu

My first reaction to this would be the song “My City Was Gone” by the pretenders because it’s played on every Rush Limbaugh show several times a day and has been around since at least 1984. But I’m just not sure of this answer. Some of the old DJ’s that were on the radio for years, say 50 years or more, do any of them have their own theme song that they kept playing through those years?

Some brands of companies have songs associated with them like “Rhapsody in Blue” for United Airlines, but that may have been played mostly on the television and not on the radio so I guess we don’t really care exactly what medium its played on, just how many times it’s been played.

There are also a lot of commercial products that have songs associated with them, would they win this contest?

Some groups like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir have been playing for over 80 years, so do they, or other groups like them, have a theme song that could win this contest? Are their singers in other countries like Julio Iglesias, who is far more popular in the rest of the world than the United States, does one of his songs top this chart?

How about something from Michael Jackson, the Beetles, Elvis or the Rolling Stones?

How about the Theme song for Sesame Street? All the song lists that I found for “Top 100 of All Time” are too limiting to answer this question.

Are there theme songs of ancient countries, like China, Israel or Japan, that have songs played more than any other? Many of them didn’t have radio for most of their existence so maybe this isn’t a fair question but I would still like to come to some sort of consensus.

I look forward to hearing your answer below and if you have any statistics to back it up, that would even be better. I tried to search this answer on the Internet but didn’t get very satisfactory results, in fact I really couldn’t find any.

Let me know what you think.

It’s no wonder that the big three network broadcast stations: ABC, CBS and NBC are all suffering drops in ratings. Everything has changed because of the Internet. Why be forced to watch some brainless sitcom while constantly interrupted by commercials when you can watch something far more interesting on YouTube any day of the week whenever you want to?

People are looking for something new, authentic and real. Television has tried to answer that with reality TV shows but nothing takes the place of real experiences as photographed and shown on YouTube.

If any of the big three networks tried anything like the following video they would get sued. Don’t try this at home. Don’t even think about trying this in any fashion! This is one of the stupidest, most dangerous things I’ve ever seen (but because someone else did it, we get the benefit of watching it). There is quite a bit of debate whether it is real or not but I am putting my vote that this is real because its just too real looking to be fake (lol). I could be wrong.

Here’s another video that has got to be one of the cutest cat videos I’ve ever seen. It’s definitely worth watching.

Here is a video that shows the power of viral videos when companies don’t live up to their word or take care of your possessions when they are supposed to. Apparently United Airlines had broken this man’s guitar while in the luggage compartment of the airplane and refused to do anything about it. This guy decided to write a whole song about it and believe me, it cost United far more than the cost of the guitar because of their incompetence! After 50,000 views of this video, United relented and said it was a “learning experience” for their company and they would be giving him $500 for his guitar. It’s possible this video cost them well over $100,000 (my guess) and far more in a damaged reputation.

Here’s another one that I still can’t decide whether it’s real or not. It certainly looks real but I’m not sure it can actually happen like this. But it’s still great entertainment.

But what does this have to do with Internet marketing? I believe there are several things that must be considered. First of all recognize that people are going online to view entertainment. Advertising budgets are switching to the Internet because many people are going to the Internet for their entertainment. For me, I can hardly sit still watching anything on TV without a laptop in front of me. I get bored so quickly that if something doesn’t interest me, I’d rather be searching online for something of more value. Now please understand, I like to learn things and I’m not bored because I want more excitement, I want something of more value for my time.

The second thing you have to realize is that if you can possibly create a video for your company or product that is done in such a manner that it becomes viral, you can reap millions of dollars of advertising if done correctly. But whatever you do don’t do it incorrectly so that it looks fake. It will do more harm than you can possibly imagine.

The third thing to recognize is that you will notice that every video now on YouTube has advertisements associated with it. If you can find the video that will benefit your product or service in some fashion, you can actually pay to have advertisements attached to those videos. This can reap a huge windfall if done the right way.

This latest trend toward videos is continuing to shift toward cell phones as they become more powerful and capable of showing whatever the people want on demand. Infrastructure still isn’t capable of creating videos for people when they wanted on their cell phones but it is definitely moving in that direction. It would be wise to start preparing for that now.

The last thing I want to mention regarding these videos is the fact that these are not scripted well-planned products, but something done on the spur of the moment with a handheld camera. There’s something about that combination that makes it more real so it’s not a big budget decision. But videos placed on your website regarding what you do and what you sell created in this fashion for people to get to know you. And it’s that unpolished reality that is becoming so appealing to so many people.

I highly recommend you start planning for creating viral videos, or at least videos that go on your website, to promote your business.

Many of these links were sent by FullSail.edu.

Everything seems to be moving to the Internet and as an industry, it is definitely flourishing. But not everyone who advertises on the Internet is benefiting from this change. In fact it has become an extremely difficult arena for many companies to succeed in.

And that brings me to a story.

Gary Halbert-Copywriter

It’s been said that Gary Halbert, the great copywriter (actually one of the greatest copywriters of all time) was at a seminar teaching people about how to be good copywriters. He gave a scenario where if everyone in the audience owned a hamburger stand and he decided to put one right across the street, what advantages would they like to have in order to compete against him?

Everybody gave all kinds of answers such as:

“I would use the tastiest, freshest hamburger meat!”

“My prices would be the lowest!”

“I’d pick the busiest location!”

“I’d want a world famous recipe!”

“I’d offer customers credit, so they can pay later!”

“I’d have more staff to serve more people faster!”

“I’d sell my burgers wholesale!”

Apparently Gary listened patiently to all of their answers until everyone had finally given their turn. “Okay, he replied, smugly smiling the weathered, all-knowing grin of an old master.

“I’ll give you every single advantage you have asked for… I only want one advantage and, if you give it to me, I’ll whip the pants off all of you when it comes to selling burgers!”

Apparently everyone was listening very intently as he gave his final answer

“The only advantage I want is… a starving crowd!”

The previous quotation was taken from a book called “The Niche Marketing Black Book” from MarketSamurai.com. These guys have an interesting product that delves into how to find niche markets on any subject and use it to your advantage in marketing. It’s a well-written book and I highly recommend it but, I disagree with the previous story.

I hate to be the one to disagree with the great Gary Halbert, one of the most revered marketers of all time, but something doesn’t quite fit. Why doesn’t it fit you ask?

The reason is because I’ve just seen that exact scenario played out last weekend where 2 hamburger stands were right across the street from each other and the story wasn’t as Gary described it.

You see, earlier in the day I had taken my boys sledding in the snow in the nearby mountains. It was a brisk cold day that was perfect for sledding. After a few hours of getting bumped around and having a great time, we had had enough and headed home. Everyone decided they were quite hungry so I called my wife and told her we were going to get something to eat on the way home. I asked the boys where they really wanted to go and a few of the popular fast food joints came to mind. Wendy’s seem to be at the top of the list until one of the other boys saw a sign for In-N-Out Burger and we deided to go there.

IN-N-OUT BURGERS

As soon as we got near it we noticed an enormous line of cars waiting to go through the drive-through. We could tell that inside, many people were standing around with no place to sit. It was going to be hard to find a place to park but we had made up our minds, we really liked their fries and that’s where we determined to go.

We could already taste it.

As we waited for the stoplight to turn into the establishment, I turned my head to the right and saw Burger King sitting right there on the opposite corner. Not a single car was in line at the drive-through. There was only four or five cars in the parking lot and the place looked mostly empty.

I pointed that out to the boys that we had the option to go there, but we had already made our decision. We went through the light, turned the corner and found a parking spot, went in, ordered our meal, waited 10 minutes for a table to open up, scarfed down those delectable fries and headed home completely happy that we made this choice.

But the image of a totally packed restaurant right across the street from an almost totally empty one selling almost the exact same product has haunted me ever since.

Why would one company, In-N-Out Burger, who spends almost nothing on advertising have 10-20 times the customers of Burger King (who spends millions on advertising) on the exact same day under the same conditions? Is their food that much better? Do they have a bigger selection? Do they have a better image, brand, logo, marketing campaign, customer service, etc?

Most people would say that in almost every case, Burger King beats them. Burger King has a far bigger selection of food items. They spend far more money in advertising, their logo was designed and refined through endless focus groups over several years. They have top of the mind awareness on all kinds of television ads as their smart aleck King does all sorts of goofy things to people.

The Burger King Bar?

So why is In-N-Out Burger literally bringing home the bacon while in this case, Burger King was barely serving anyone?

I believe I’m about to reveal to you a secret that is so essential and is so completely and totally relevant to the world of Internet marketing (and marketing in general) that you need to take great heed to this message. This is so simple yet so powerful that I believe it makes all the difference between the two Burger places I’ve just mentioned.

You see, although I really like In-N-Out Burger’s hamburgers and especially their fries (but only when they’re hot) their food is really not THAT much better than Burger Kings. I mean we’re not comparing Burger King to PF Chang’s here, we’re comparing it to another hamburger place. All the major fast food chains offer burgers that are only slightly different in taste (although I know that some people disagree with that over-generaliztion and have sworn allegiances to their favorite brand. I’m just glad that McDonald’s finally recently improved the taste of their burgers. I refused to eat there for years!).

The prices aren’t that much different. The selection is incredibly smaller because they don’t offer a $.99 value meal, chicken strips, salads, and endless assortment of side dishes, kids meals, tofu options, anything vegetarian, etc. They basically only have three sizes of the same hamburgers, one size of fries and the usual brands of drinks and some shakes. Thats it. And it all fits on a small menu just above the order takers head.

They were located right across the street from each other so that can’t be a real big factor, in fact, I got off the freeway on the same side of the street as Burger King and had to cross the street to get to In-N-Out Burger, so that rules that out. They weren’t offering hamburgers at wholesale or on credit, they actually have less room to eat in and people were standing around, the company isn’t new (since 1948) so it’s not one of those phenomenons relating to something brand-new and exciting.

So what is it that makes it so successful and have more people eating there?

You see, Gary Halbert was wrong. Both of these places had the exact same customer base: starving crowds of people. They were all driving by the same street. There were no special signs anywhere advertising a reduction in costs or free fries with their order (there actually may have been some on the Burger King place-those kinds of signs are always there). They were all looking for a quick and tasty meal but 20 times more people chose In-N-Out Burger than Burger King.

Gary Halbert was right if you were thinking about wanting to establish a business and deciding which business to go in. Yes, of course, you would want to find one where people are clamoring for your product. But I believe he is incorrect in this instance when comparing competitive strategies between those in the same industry. They already have the same crowd of starving customers.

And that brings us full circle to the beginning of my discussion-why do some companies who market on the Internet succeed while others don’t? How do some companies manage to spend a fraction of what another does and get tremendously better results?

If you thought trying to find your ad in a newspaper was difficult, it can be far worse on the Internet. One of the things that is so appealing to those who want to advertise or market on the Internet is its low cost. In many cases it’s extremely low. There isn’t the giant expense of television towers, radio waves, huge printing presses, etc. to get the message out. Everyone with computer access can market on the Internet.

But that low-cost alternative can be extremely expensive. For many people, some estimate well over 90%, they don’t succeed in getting their message across. They waste their time and effort and how much does that cost?

Just send me your basic information, and I’ll reply with an answer that has tremendous impact on your Internet marketing decisions, in fact all of your marketing decisions. In fact, some of you may not choose to market on the Internet at all after reading what I am about to reveal, its that powerful.

I promise I won’t spam you, that’s not my goal. My goal is to help companies market themselves on the Internet, not use subversive or illegal tactics to accomplish this task. and if you don’t like information, you can always delete and it’s easy to opt out of getting any more e-mails from me.

I just think it’s essential that people understand this vital principle of marketing can not only save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars, it will help you find more targeted customers, ones that are looking for you.

Once you realize this, it can totally set you free and save you a fortune. I mean think about it, In-N-Out Burger is an old company, with an old-style, a limited product offering that doesn’t hardly advertise anywhere. Yet it creams its competitor right across the street because it understands one principle of marketing and has stuck with that principle. It hasn’t gotten diverted into endless options and programs. It has a brand and sticks with it. It knows where it fits in knows where it doesn’t.

I look forward to hearing your comments about this principle. Just fill out the form to the right and I will get back to you soon.

Every company whether they realize it or not, is putting forth some sort of brand. I think most people think that branding is related only to Nike, Coca-Cola, Apple or IBM, but this is not the case. Every company has a brand. Every business has a brand.

What is that brand? It’s not just the logo, or a trademark, or comprehensive identity package. It’s been described as “a gut feeling as to what your company represents”. (1) Because there’s so much competition in the world today one of the most important things for anyone doing any kind of marketing is to be authentic and real. Even the mere whiff of being inauthentic can lose a sale, the customer or a permanent reputation.

It’s also important to remember who you are. Remember that it is impossible for you to please the whole world or provide everything they need. I have seen numerous companies, large and small, lose site of this issue and cause them to branch out into all sorts of products and services and thereby dilute the message.

One of the latest of these is Google’s new foray into digital telephones. Haven’t they learned the lesson of Microsoft? Microsoft was very profitable once they stuck with producing the software that ran the hardware produced by IBM, Dell and several others. But greed knows no bounds. They’ve now immersed themselves into so many products that profits are way down.

A long time ago, General Motors establish several brands that each meant a specific thing. Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Buick, Pontiac, Cadillac, etc. all meant something different and were created for a very specific audience. Over the years this drastically changed and you could hardly tell one brand from another. I presume this was all done in the name of cost savings but it cost them the company in the process.

Never change your brand. I don’t care what it is, don’t change it. You can certainly improve upon it but don’t remove it from its essence, from what it is and who it’s meant to serve. As soon as the company changes its focus from creating something useful into something that is only profitable, a few drops of poison have been added to its drinking water.

It’s that darn word “profits”. Yes of course a business must make profits or it cannot survive, but the way they get profits that will maintain a company for the long haul is a far different strategy than the one that gives some quick profits at the expense of their future.

As soon as the focus changes only to profits its death is certain.

If you’d like some advice on establishing your brand and creating a profitable mark for the future, please fill out the form to the right and let me know what you’re looking for. Let’s build a profitable niche together.

(1-The Brand Gap, Marty Neumeier)

This article was originated from FullSail.edu and a class on branding.

I asked to see his website and when I went there I learned all kinds of things about this company. First of all I discovered that they are getting a large amount of traffic (over 282,000 views per month or around 10,000 per day) and a great deal of that is from PPC. In other words they are paying for people to visit their site. Some months they pay over $16,000 per day for these visitors.

But the real killer here is that they don’t have their website properly formatted for SEO and therefore not able to take advantage of free traffic. By just applying some basic principles they could have a tremendous amount of free, regular and steady traffic to their site. I am not sure who persuaded them to just do PPC and forget about basic SEO, but they must have some motive to do so.

I recently heard of a company that did about $10 Million per year and spent about $1 Million with Google PPC per year to accomplish this. But something happened (no one knows why for sure) but they were de-listed by big G and went out of business. A few hundred employees out of work because some bureaucrat didn’t like something and pulled the plug. The management swore that they were not doing anything unethical or illegal and they had no idea what happened or why.

Never put all your eggs in one basket with Internet Marketing! Make sure you have a good footing in many areas and not just one. There is too much power in the hands of some of these people and this is ripe for corruption.

If they would pull the plug on $1,000,000 per year in advertising dollars, they will certainly do it for a lot less, and possibly any other reason they can think of.

Everyone wants to be on the first page of Google. It’s understandable why because it’s not much use being any other page. Nobody goes past page one, in fact 20% of the people don’t even know you can scroll down!

Although that seems hard to believe, it’s true. What’s also true is that the Yellow Pages are dead. I asked someone recently how much they spent per month on advertising in the Yellow Pages. They said about $600. I then asked him how many phone calls they’ve gotten over the past month from the Yellow Pages ad. He said two. So in essence he was paying $300 per lead by advertising in the Yellow Pages.

In the past, about 15 years ago, I also advertised in the Yellow Pages and spent about $1200 a month. I don’t think we ever got more than five calls a month from that ad. But that’s just the nature of things, things change. And things are changing dramatically for those who want to advertise and market their business.

All of the old mediums of advertising are suffering right now. Newspapers, television, radio, direct mail, etc. all have declining revenues because of one main reason: the Internet. Of course there are other factors such as the economy but the Internet is growing dramatically in advertising revenues. Google’s revenue last year was $22,000,000,000 just in advertising. The next closest one was Time Warner, the mega-opulous of traditional media and it had $9,000,000,000 in advertising revenue. And Google’s revenue is up substantially from the previous year.

Internet advertising has one over-arching, overwhelming advantage over all other forms of advertising: traceability. You can track down to the penny how much money a person makes from any given ad. They know exactly where it came from, what keywords they used to find it, what the resolution of their monitor was (I’m not sure why they bother with that one), what documents referred them to it, what domains they came from, etc.

No other form of advertising has this capability. Everything else is just guesswork. The Nielsen ratings, as good as they try to be, are never as accurate. And that’s the advantage of the Internet.

Not only does it track it all, in many ways it’s free. But free is a bit of a misnomer. Anyone now can write a blog or an article and have the whole world able to view it. Whether they do it or not is an entirely different issue and that’s where the problem with Internet marketing lies-it’s so easy that it’s become very crowded.

To print a newspaper you have to have massive expensive machines and elaborate distribution channels. Much of the same things are true regarding television and radio. But with the Internet, all you have to have is a connection. You can even access it from your phone nowadays. And I predict even more dramatic changes in the near future.

But the Internet has also come of age because now local search marketing is the new rage, or at least a fairly new phenomenon of the last two years. The ability to target a specific industry in a single zip code, town, city, county and/or state has never really been viable before. Now it is and it is very cost effective.

You can easily target a few specific phrases for your business that you think people are typing in the search for you. Because that’s where people are going to search for you anyway. They’re not going to the phonebook anymore.

So the key question here is not IF you will become involved in local search marketing, but WHEN? It will be a rare business that survives in the future without using this technology. You simply must have a website and it must be properly formatted. But you must also drive traffic to it because it’s very very difficult to be found on its own. Most people don’t have the time, energy, or money to to compete with the big boys and their elaborate websites.

But a simple, SEO-friendly and optimized website is an absolute necessity and as long as it’s effectively marketed, it can be your best lead generator possible.

Its also a lot less expensive than the Yellow Pages!

Contact me when you’re ready to increase your sales and find new customers. Just use the form on the right or call me at 702-726-2427.

Just look at how much things have changed since the mid-1400s when Gutenberg came out with the first Bible. The church at the time martyred some individuals because they had the nerve to copy the Bible and distribute it. This took power away from the church and the leaders. The people could read for themselves God’s word and not have to depend on somebody’s interpretation of it and their demands that you follow them.

In the past, major corporations tightly controlled their advertising message and squashed any dissent. Frankly it was very expensive to offer an opposing point of view anyway. If you wanted to complain about something you could write a letter to the editor and if you are lucky, get it printed. You tell a few of their friends about your disappointment. There are some fairly high-level examples of people who went to much greater lengths to let people know that they were disappointed with the product. Everything from buying a billboard to complaining to Congress has been tried.

But now all that has changed and the playing field has been leveled. The following video explains this in a profound way:

One of the messages of social media is that companies have to let go and forget trying to control the message. That’s a very nerve-racking thing for most businesses to think about. But I’m here to tell you that unless businesses lose that control, in the near future they will be out of business. Because if they remove people’s ability to add to the message, there will be no message. Social media is just what it says is-social. People want to take part in things, they want to add and contribute, they want to voice their opinion and tell people about their experiences. Businesses today must recognize this fundamental change that has come about because of social media.

And if they do, and if they take care of their customers, and if they listen to the consumer they will have more consumers. The message will continue to be enlarged and expanded upon. New products and services will be invented in the social media platform. Consumers will feel part of the creation of products and companies.

Recently there was a large study done regarding games and using game based marketing for companies. In this manner a game is used to teach a principle and the whole time the company’s logo or product is used as part of the game. When these things go viral it’s astounding how much advertising value they get out of it. But the most amazing part of this is the physical interaction with a product. It isn’t a passive message like television or radio where we listen to or see what they’re telling you. In the game you are playing with it. You are making it a part of your psyche. You are involving your life with that brand. This is a powerful tool and again something part of the social media platform that is changing the world.

There are so many deeply powerful aspects of social media that are only beginning to be explored, understood and implemented. Please contact me to see how we can involve your business in this amazing new technology that can explode your customer base.

Now it must be recognized that the people that are more highly motivated to put a remark about an experience with a company are those that have had negative experiences. Somebody who feels they’ve been taken, ripped off, or exploited in any fashion are determined to tell the world about what happened.

But companies had better wake up to this reality. Unless they have someone that is looking over these different types of sites at least weekly, preferably daily, they’re going to be in trouble. Please see the video below showing the experience of one of my customers.

It’s a lesson for just about every single business out there.

The Internet has made Crowdsourcing Viable

Crowdsourcing has replaced a number of those internal design teams with consumer created designs and products that businesses only then produce when enough orders have been placed, thereby greatly reducing the risk (Boutin, 2006).
Since the Internet is “likely to reinvent tried-and-true models” (Rappa, 2009) the purpose of this study is to expose this trend to businesses that are unaware of its impact so they may decide whether they must adapt to it or not. This is a review of 3 articles written on the subject of crowdsourcing and what they have discovered on the subject.

The first site under review is from Wired.com with an article entitled “The Rise of Crowdsourcing” (Howe, The rise of crowdsourcing, 2006). The article covers the subject of crowdsourcing from four different examples. It starts off with a story about the project director at the National Health Museum in Washington DC named Claudia Menashe. She needed some photos of sick people and several years earlier had run across a stock photo collection by a photographer named Mark Hamill out of Manhattan Beach California. There was some discussion about the price of the photos and since it was for a nonprofit organization he gave her a discount equal to about half what a corporate client would pay and thus a total sale of approximately $600. After several weeks the offer was refused because Claudia had found a company called iStockphoto, which sold photographs for approximately $1each.

The article goes into fairly detailed information regarding iStockphoto and how it shook up the stock photo industry. The main reasons given were the fact that digital cameras have greatly improved an average photographer’s ability to get a somewhat decent photograph, thereby opening the door to millions of would-be photographers. These photographers can easily contribute to iStockphoto’s archives because of the Internet and the fact that there was no loss in quality because of film production or scanning and that makes them very competitive in this creative industry. Combining a digital image with a program like Photoshop, which allows for infinite alteration, the article then claims that the day of the high-priced photographer is almost dead.

The last piece of the profitability equation in the photography world was a micro-payment system that allowed these new photographers to be able to receive a commission on every purchase. For example, instead of selling one photograph for $100 they would sell one photograph 100 times at a dollar each. The professional photographers have had to dramatically change their business model and even made statements such as “I just don’t see much of a future for professional stock photography.” (Howe, The rise of crowdsourcing, 2006, p. 1)

The next story called “The Packager” shows how viral videos have made a dramatic change in VH1, the music television station (Howe, The rise of crowdsourcing, 2006, p. 2). They created a program called “Web Junk 20″ which featured the 20 most popular videos shown on the Internet in a particular week. This became a way for the station to provide entertaining programming at a substantially reduced rate and in the process, increased viewership because the people producing the videos are the ones watching the show. In other words the viewers create what is viewed. This user-generated content is then part of a large award ceremony each year to spur competition and increase viewership.

The third article on crowdsourcing is called “the Tinkerer” (Howe, The rise of crowdsourcing, 2006, p. 3). It talks about a company called InnoCentive which posts difficult scientific problems on their website and anyone in the network can take a shot at cracking them. Those on the network must be approved to provide information on such a subject and it is not open to everyone on the web. Those who do solve the problems are paid anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000 per solution and more than 30% of the problems have been solved this way. This proved to be a significant savings over in-house research firms and a greater increase in the number of problems solved. Other similar companies are using crowdsourcing networks that allow companies to find and hire retired scientists for one-off assignments. It also shows how using crowdsourcing has improved the profits of Proctor and Gamble and increased the number of new products it produces.

Crowdsourcing Effects All Businesses

The last of the four articles is called “The Masses” (Howe, The rise of crowdsourcing, 2006, p. 4). It shows that by using a web-based marketplace, companies can find people to perform tasks that computers are generally lousy at, like: identifying items in a photograph, skimming real estate documents to find identifying information, writing short descriptions, transcribing podcasts, etc. He gives a number of examples of companies who have used this technology such as Amazon.com, Alaska airlines, and one called iConclude outside of Seattle Washington. It shows how this last company reduced its expenses for a particular project from $2000 down to just $5 by using crowdsourcing.

The information presented by Wired.com seems to be very reliable and valid. There is no apparent ulterior motive in presenting the information even though there is no documentation as to the sources of the story unless it is the author himself. But there is one person who claims, “that Wired Magazine is a publication of general interest topics although its mission is not clearly stated. What is clear is that Wired Magazine is not a scientific or technical journal” (Lange, 2006). He goes on to say that, although he is writing about a completely different subject than discussed here, that of vehicle theft by circumventing the transponder systems, “Wired Magazine is not a publication bound by scientific foundation nor are the articles subject to traditional protocols of scientific scrutiny such as the “peer review” process” (Lange, 2006). In such a fashion almost all magazines fall into this category and should not be compared with the same level of value as a peer reviewed paper.

The next website under review is from BusinessWeek.com. The article is called “Outsourcing: Consumers as Creators” (Boutin, 2006). It describes a trend that allows customers to help design the products they buy but tells them not to expect to get paid a fortune for their brilliant idea. It goes into a detailed explanation about a company called “Threadless”, a Chicago-based T-shirt manufacturer whose design process consists entirely of an online contest. People from all over the country submit their designs to be voted on by the masses and the 4 to 6 highest-rated designs are then put into production, but only after enough customers have pre-ordered the design to ensure it won’t be a money loser. The winners receive $2000 in cash and prizes but the real motivation is just to see their work worn in public.

Threadless Shirt Designs

For customers it provides a wide range of choices and from the company’s point of view they don’t have to hire a design staff. They only produce shirts that are pre-ordered resulting in dramatic risk reduction. Another example they give is of a Japanese specialty retailer of custom furniture designs that follows a similar pattern. People submit their designs that are then voted on and analyzed by the viewers and goes into production only after they are ordered.

Business Week should be considered quite valid and reliable because of the fact that they have gone to the extent to put up a page of their code of ethics that every writer and journalist promises to follow which is part of the McGraw-Hill Companies code of ethics and The American Society of Magazine Editors (Business Week, 2005). References to their standards are listed on that site.

The next website under review is from Adage.com or Advertising Age. The title of the article is called “Can Creativity be Crowdsourced?” (Schmitt, 2009). This discusses crowdsourcing from an advertising point of view and shows that certain websites like OpenNet.net and Crowdspring.com offer advertising, marketing and design ideas via the crowdsourcing method where, in one example, a network of more than 11,500 creative people from more than 125 countries contributes their designs. A request for a simple logo generated over 1200 submissions.

Many other companies are also reviewed on this site such as those that do graphic bookmarking services; interfaith designers looking for inspiration to solve common design problems; those focused on sharing colors and pallets; etc.
But this article also goes into the discussion of companies fighting such activity. “For marketers, crowdsourcing creative services pose both great risk and rewards.” They even point out that there is even an online organization called “No!Spec” actively trying to educate designers on the perils of participating in these services.

As for the validity and reliability of Advertising Age it must be remembered that this is also a journalistic organization and well established for many years and not a fly-by-night company. Yes, they are writing about something that has had a dramatic effect on their industry but that will also be of value to those in that industry and help them to see what is happening.

In conclusion, the overall theme of each of these articles and stories is the same: outsourcing certain tasks to the crowds or masses reduces costs and increase creativity, thus it is called “crowdsourcing” and could be likened to the ultimate “design by committee”, a phrase usually associated with poor design and needless complexity (Wikipedia, 2009), yet in this case results in the best solution at the lowest cost. The main reason this phenomenon exists is because of the Internet.

It has been said that, “tools does not a designer make,” (Croft, 2007) but having the tool of a computer in the hands of millions of people opens the doors to all sorts of individuals to chime in, whether they have talent or not. But when an artistic person in a poor foreign country creates an acceptable design and only needs to make a few hundred dollars a month to survive, it logically makes it very difficult for someone who needs a few thousand dollars a month to compete.
While there is much resistance to the implementation of this trend, Eric Schmidt probably said it best: “the crowdsourcing of creativity is proving that a great idea can come from anyone, anywhere. The question then is not whether our industry needs to adjust, but how quickly.” (Schmitt, 2009)

References

• Boutin, P. (2006, July 13). Crowdsourcing: consumers as creators. Retrieved Oct 17, 2009, from Business Week: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jul2006/id20060713_755844.htm
• Business Week. (2005, Apr 20). The businessweek code of journalistic ethics. Retrieved Oct 23, 2009, from Business Week online: ethics statement: http://www.businessweek.com/ethics.htm
• Croft, J. (2007, Sep 30). Tools do not a designer make. Retrieved Oct 23, 2009, from Jeffcroft.com: http://jeffcroft.com/blog/2007/sep/30/tools-do-not-designer-make/
• Howe, J. (2009, Sep 1). Goodbye to all that … and hello to all this! Retrieved Oct 17, 2009, from Crowdsourcing: http://www.crowdsourcing.com/
• Howe, J. (2006, June). The rise of crowdsourcing. Retrieved Oct 17, 2009 from Wired: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html?pg=1&topic=crowds&topic_set=
• Lange, J. (2006, Oct). A review of wired magazine article “pinch my ride” by Brad Stone. Retrieved Oct 23, 2009, from Langetech.net: http://www.langetech.net/uploads/Response%20to%20Pinch%20My%20Ride%2010.03.06.pdf
• Rappa, M. (2009, Jun 1). Business models on the web. Retrieved Oct 17, 2009, from Digital Enterprise: http://digitalenterprise.org/models/models.html
• Schmitt, G. (2009, Apr 16). Can creativity be crowdsourced? Retrieved Oct 17, 2009, from Advertising Age: http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=136019
• Wikipedia. (2009, Sep 17). Design by committee. Retrieved Oct 24, 2009, from Design by committee, wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee
• Winkler, R. (2009, Apr 2). Marketing basics. Retrieved Oct 17, 2009, from Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/SmallBusinessLaw/idUSTRE5314ME20090402?pageNumber=3

(This article was an assignment for the Masters Degree in Internet Marketing course at Full Sail University, Oct 2009)