On Crowdsourcing

Some stream-of-consciousness thinking before the sun comes up today.

I haven't given all that much thought to crowdsourcing, which may be odd given my line of work.  

I haven't given all that much thought to Louis CK, which may be odd given my age and comedic sensibility.

I was listening to Louis CK on Bill Simmons' most excellent podcast, and without meaning to they touched on an interesting point about the wisdom of the many versus the wisdom of the few.

As I understand it, Louis has a very successful show on FX.  What's interesting about it is that the network has zero control over it.  They wire him $200K per episode, and from that he creates the entire thing (including taking out his salary).  

This autonomy is very rare.  It's also a relatively paltry sum for an actor as successful as Louis.

But the show is hit, and growing an audience with every episode.

So why is it working?

Louis' position is this (paraphrasing):

The more people involved in making decisions (particularly creative ones) the more watered down an idea gets.  In essence, consensus-building breeds mediocrity.  

By the time Bob from legal, Mary from finance, John from ad sales and Lisa from PR have all given their input, the essence of the idea is lost.  And this is nothing against Bob, Mary, John and Lisa - I'm sure they are good at what they do.  But they are not comedians. 

So you've hired an incredibly successful creative (in this case Louis) for his talent but essentially said to him, "we only trust your sensibility to a certain point."  

The disconnect is that by the time Bob, Mary, John and Lisa have stamped the idea, it's not Louis' sensibility any more.  So why hire him in the first place?

Bringing it back to my world, I do have to wonder out loud: Is the wisdom of the crowd all that wise, or is the real value that it make us (me, you, brands, agencies) feel safer about any given decision simply because it's based on consensus?  And as a result, are we breeding mediocrity?  What constitutes authority on any given topic - deep knowledge, a proven track record and passion?  Or simply a point-of-view, no matter how uniformed or unformed, and an Internet connection?

I genuinely don't know.

But I think of some of the great creative and marketing talents of our time, and how they would view the wisdom of the crowd.  Three immediately come to mind.  Clive Davis - he didn't do any market research before signing a scrawny young singer who eventually became Whitney Houston.  Steve Jobs once famously said, "It's really hard to design products by focus groups.  A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."  And finally, Alex Bogusky (always a polarizing character) - Crispin is (in)famous for retaining creative control over their clients' work.  And love or hate the agency, you can't deny they've had a pretty killer run.

That's all for now.

Comments

[Josh Katz]

IN RESPONSE: On Crowdsourcing
Ian, I have been following your posts for months and would like to offer my opinion to your latest, “On Crowdsourcing”. In the interest of transparency, I should let you and your readers know that I am an advocate of Crowdsourcing and work for CrowdSource.com.
I find it interesting that you equated Louis CK’s arrangement with FX as an argument against using the “wisdom of crowds”. Though I agree that input from Bob, Mary, John and Lisa may not enhance the creativity of Louis, I think it is important to distinguish between creative contributions and creative control. Mandating consensus with regard to creative decisions can dilute the message of the content being produced. However, leveraging a crowd, can give “creatives” access to a diverse talent pool on an unprecedented global scale.
To quote Alex Bogusky, “the future is never what you expect it to be…I never predicted the role that technology might play and certainly not its latest role in the crowdsourcing of ideas.” Alex goes on to attribute his success and that of his agency to their ability to single out the best ideas and bring them to fruition. It is this idea that is core to my response. Just because a crowd is used to produce ideas or creative concepts, does not inherently dilute the value of the final product. It does however increase the need to monitor the contributions and enhances the value of those that are best at identifying quality ideas. In the same article, Alex goes on to state that CP+B utilizes crowdsourcing for projects such as logo design (Brammo) while maintaining the creative control you mentioned.
I suggest that CrowdSourcing is fundamentally changing the way that companies do business and crowds are increasingly being used to drive innovation. The key, is to harness the power of the crowd, while maintaining the autonomy to make decisions as you see fit. Numerous companies including, Dell, Starbucks, Google, Netflix and even Apple have embraced innovation from crowds.
You mentioned Steve Jobs’ famous quote, “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups,” and I would like to point out that Apple routinely uses a crowd (its users) to solve design issues. As recently as last month, Apple was contacting users directly in an attempt to find a solution to the iPhone 4S’s battery problems. I recognize that this is not the same as design by committee, but it does illustrate the value of using a diverse crowd to solve business problems, including those relating to design.
I truly believe that crowdsourcing is fundamentally changing the landscape of business as we know it. Crowdsourcing ideas is not a new concept, but the speed and efficiency with which we can create curated crowds, glean quality ideas and disseminate these ideas as finished products to the masses is a phenomenon that has only become possible recently. One really interesting example is J.K Rowling’s newest project, Pottermore [http://youtu.be/oYs1d3jAdG0].