Day 4 at SXSW: Activating the Crowd – proof that creating relationships with people can leverage marketing campaigns beyond any media spend
By Tommy McCubbin at SXSW
The most inspiring projects I’ve seen this week at SxSW, all have one thing in common: they show collaboration at scale.
There are variations on how people have collaborated with communities, but all have had the same risks and barriers. They’ve each relinquished total ownership of their idea, risked having their IP stolen, being criticized, and foregoing the big ‘reveal’ moment.
It’s a bold move that in these examples has, and will continue to, offer enormous returns to the idea.
I watched ‘The Democratisation of Publishing’, where Guy Kawasaki told how he ‘crowd-edits’ his books. He has access to 5 million fans on a range of social platforms, and each of them has an opportunity to give feedback on his works in progress. He shares his first edits as a Google doc with groups of 60 people at a time, and goes through several rounds until he, and his fans get it right. Then he publishes it.
In an interview with Julie Uhrman, founder of soon-to-be-launched gaming console, OUYA, it was evident Kickstarter is to thank for where her company is at today. “As soon as I shared the concept on Kickstarter, I was giving away ownership of the idea”. Their original target investment was $950k. They’ve raised a total of $8.5m, and are set to start shipping in June.
63,000 people have contributed an average of $136 to the company, while it was napkin sketch, and now those people are the company’s passionate, free, research group, who really care about the Ouya product.
This community has participated in polls on Reddit, deciphering which order the buttons on the controller went, and have been sent prototypes of the controller to test and give feedback.
Uhrman quoted, ‘The Kickstarter experience is the opposite of Field Of Dreams, where, ‘if they come, you will build it.’
DeviantART is the world’s largest online art community, with 22 million registered members.
Its community creates, shares, and critiques vast amounts of artistic content, ranging from illustrations of Batman, to portraits of Presidents.
In a talk with their founder Angelo Sotira, and editor, Ron Martino, called ‘Creator vs Audience: The Next Chapter In Storytelling’, they discussed their most recent and bold project, Odyssey II.
In a collaboration championed by author Clive Barker, Odyssey II is a novel, written one chapter at a time, by the DeviantART community. After a chapter is chosen, it’s open to the crowd to decide where the story goes next. Each chapter receives thousand’s of submissions, and everyone feels ownership of the novel. By the time it comes to publishing, Odyssey II has a group of advocates that any Author would dream of.
SxSW projects were examples of how the Internet is full of communities we can access for ideas, guidance, and feedback on any project, campaign or product, for free.
By finding people who care, and activating that crowd, you create relationships with people you can leverage beyond any media spend, and create something you can be sure your customers will like. After all, they’ll make it with you.
Tommy McCubbin (left) is Interactive Director at Clemenger BBDO Melbourne and is in Austin for SXSW reporting exclusively for Campaign Brief.