Why Crowdsourcing Your Brand Is Bad
You may have heard the term “crowdsourcing” at some point in the last few months, but it might still be, for the most part, one of those words that doesn’t mean much of anything to you just yet. You may not have an especially strong opinion of it either way. I’d like to take a few minutes to try to change your mind on that.
Let’s start off with an explanation about what crowdsourcing is in relation to logo design. There are a handful of companies that act as a liaison between a client and a collection of designers. The client chooses to offer a certain amount money as a cash prize, which it then passes on to the liaison to hold for safekeeping. The collection of designers submit their logo designs for review and potential reward. If the client selects one of the designs as the winner, that specific designer, and only that designer, gets paid for their work. If no design is selected, nobody gets paid.
At face value there doesn’t appear to be much harm in it. The designers have a chance to break into the business and the client is able to review a wide array of design styles at a very low price point. So what’s the problem?
Let’s look at it from a different angle.
If you were going to have someone write about your life story you’d probably want that person to know a little something about you. You might spend some time being interviewed, reminiscing about past events and going over anything interesting that you’ve encountered over the years. In order for the biography to have any value or worth it would need to be about you as a person. The contents of the book couldn’t possibly be accurate or meaningful if the author didn’t know who you were, having never bothered to talk to you, your friends or your family.
Crowdsourcing seeks to take the approach of writing a biography without knowing the story. It relies on a brief, passing summary of a company at best. Nothing more. More importantly, and at its worst, crowdsourcing eliminates the story and settles on an image that doesn’t contain the least bit of substance. Crowdsourcing completely disregards the brand.
Without the brand, Nike is just a silly looking swoosh. Apple is just a fruit. The brand makes a company mean something to its audience. It’s the product, the advertising, the athletes, the machines and the overall presence. It’s everything you feel and think about the company when you hear the name or see the logo. That doesn’t just happen. It’s created. And it’s not just a logo.
A logo is a single element that goes into constructing the brand. It’s just one piece amongst many that makes up the entirety of the story. The logo is the result of the conversation that takes place at the forefront of the process. Without discovering what the brand is as a whole, the logo is just a meaningless icon. It might, if you’re lucky, look pretty, but it won’t mean anything. The story will never have been written.
Creating a brand relies on a conversation, or a series of conversations, that seek to glean as much information as possible and turn the results into not only a description of who the company is and what they do, but also to help create a course of action. When properly executed, the branding session can discover new opportunities and perceived threats. It can help you develop methods to gain additional value or act against potential dangers.
And if you don’t craft your own brand, your competitors will be happy to do it for you.
A brand can’t be built if you simplify your company to one or two qualifying statements before having dozens of ill-informed designers set off in every possible direction to make a logo. That’s exactly why crowdsourcing is wrong for your company. It’s not bad because it’s cheap. It’s bad because it lacks value and won’t help you to discover who you are as a business.
From a purely aesthetic standpoint, crowdsource designers also tend to be relatively untrained in the foundations of graphic design, which frequently results in logos that are based on stylized trends and fads. You might luck out with a design that has longevity, but it’s more likely that you’ll end up with a logo that won’t have the legs to carry your company through the years. Chances are you’re probably not interested in having the logo equivalent of bell-bottom pants.
I’ll be honest. It’s easy to understand the appeal of crowdsourcing from a non-designer’s point of view. It doesn’t cost much and you get quick results. That’s what clients tend to see and that’s why it continues to grow in popularity and is gaining a foothold on the design industry.
But there is a genuine value in hiring a firm that’s well versed in creating an all-encompassing brand for your company. Crowdsourcing has its immediate appeal at face value, but the costs are corrosive and inherently damaging to your company’s well-being and potential for success.
Your story is worth more than that.
“Why Crowdsourcing *Your Brand* Is Bad”
FTFY
Good point. Fixed.
Good clarification Joe. Thanks for the comment. Our focus in this post is specifically related to the recent trend of “crowdsourcing” branding and identity—typically the logo design portion. Your point is valid.
True crowdsourcing in the development community can be a very positive thing and has a different connotation. Open source development creates a collaborative environment and utilizes the “big giant brains” of a community for the purpose of executing a task, application, whatever.
When the term crowdsourcing is hijacked and applied to branding and identity, the end result is the stripping of an entire profession of its worth and value, relegating it to little more than window-dressing and “pretty pictures drawn by folks who draw good.”
Thanks for the feedback. Keep it comin’.
Sean,
I can totally relate. This next point is hotly debated any time it’s brought up, but what if there were some type of professional license for what you do, and in order to get it, you had to demonstrate a certain level of competence, maturity, experience and professionalism?
This is a delayed response, but I’m going to weigh in anyway.
Personally, I think there’s some appeal to design certification, but only if there’s a reputable source that can actually stand behind it’s virtual blessings with some sincerity and authenticity.
What would most likely happen is you’d have a cluster of money-grubbing generic outfits who would gladly take your money to, in return, spit out meaningless documentation. It’s happening on a fairly large scale in the social media community because the objectivity of design and communication is so difficult to verify as either right or wrong. At a gut level it’s easy enough to qualify something as better or worse, but without absolutes, everything becomes debatable. In that case, what is the criteria for verification? Profit? Quality? Customer satisfaction? I think it’s an interesting idea, but I have doubts about how well it could be executed.
I think the “best” solution is education followed by proof. If the client can’t understand the value of what’s being provided, then the fail is on us for not being adequately informative.
In terms of crowdsourcing for designs, for me, I am quite on the fence regarding the use of a crowdsourcing site for a logo design. It is still a touchy issue for most designers who said that crowdsourcing is a no-no for obtaining a logo design. I have tried crowdsourcing before and I know the risks involved but it comes within the territory. But there are other no-frills logo design websites online such as http://www.logobee.com, http://www.logodesignstation.com, logoyes.com, etc. which are actually great in getting a professional logo design at a fraction of the price and minus the risks of crowdsourcing (plagiarism is one of them). Seeing that there are no consultation services, the price is significantly lower than that of conventional design firms. For instance, I have tried http://www.logodesignstation.com and the experience was indeed a positive one. I managed to get my business logo design at an affordable price and the turnaround time was great as well. Highly recommended. Although crowdsourcing for logo designs could be a bane for some, many find it to be a viable alternative to get a fast logo on the cheap. It all depends on the individual actually.