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The story of Twitter's logo appeared in Wired a few days back, the basics of the story suggesting that Twitter paid no more than $6 for its identity. In a word where product performance trumps image, this is going to be par for the course for many a new brand starting out.

The reality that logos can be purchased for $5 and ads can be sourced from the crowd, should be sending a giant reality check through the halls of branding and communication agencies worldwide.

Of course, it's easy to sit in the ivory tower and talk about how the logos and ads we design and make are so much better than the ones created by the crowd and stock illustrators, but no one maybe listening.

The industry can no longer take it for granted that it's the only game in town and that there a legions of willing clients eager to pay top dollar for its services.

There are probably way more, but here are 4 implications for this to start the conversation rolling.

1. Competition is Everywhere- we need to get over this. We need to be able to communicate what makes us different and why we are better than everyone else. Proof, proof and more proof.

2. Effectiveness Awards Need to Be Visible- While everyone in the industry may be aware of The Effies, not all of corporate America is. More could be done here and the same for the design awards.

3. What's Your Value Add?- You make ads and your help companies with their identity, but what else do you do? Is there anything about how you get to ads or design that makes the results better and can you prove this?

4. What Do You Make?- Being typecast as the guys and girls who makes ads and logos is a very dangerous place to be, it places you right in the competitive firing line. The world is going to belong to make things, those who make powerful intellectual leaps and bring new ideas to the world. The communication industry needs to be here, creating powerful ideas that make meaning. Instead of ads and logos, think cultures, products, applications, ideas and intellectual property.


Posted by Ed Cotton While the jury is out on whether or not the crowd can create, there seems to be a splinter of evidence to suggest they can. The new short film from Mass Animation looks almost Pixar-like in its quality. The project used Facebook to recruit and reach out to animators around the world, who contributed individual frames. The film has 50k fans and over 17k people downloaded the software to participate.

While the crowd did contribute on mass, the editing process and quality control must have been rigorous, because the final list of animators, who's frames were used, is fairly short.

Mass Animation must have done something right in its promotion, marketing and outreach to ensure that quality animators participated in the project. Obviously, the incentive of credits in a high profile short film is not bad.

Here's the trailer.




Posted by Ed Cotton Opening your company up to  ideas from the outside is an obviously intelligent thing to do. Passionate brand fans and inventors exist out there and they should have the forum and the chance to share their thinking. It seems that most companies will soon have some kind of web-based environment where this can happen.

However, it's going to get complicated because companies will have the chance to create profitable new ventures from the ideas of these outsiders. Whether these outsiders get fairly compensated will be a matter for further discussion.

Campbell's is the latest company to try this out, but if you investigate and read the small print, it's clear they they are not willing to pay that much.




In a 3.0 world where the crowd is coming closer to the company, members of the crowd with good ideas want to be treated differently. We've already seen YouTube move to pay for performance model, perhaps these brands with crowdsourced R&D will adopt a similar plan.

The other thing we are likely to see is Crowdsourcing lawyers; professionals at the ready to help people in the crowd protect their ideas.


Posted by Ed Cotton wired does a crowdsourcing experiment (37.86252172252514 , -122.50150680541992) Assignment Zero is a great initiative from Wired magazine, it's open sourced journalism. The first big assignment was ironically, the topic of "crowdsourcing", Assignment Zero's own "crowd" interviewed Wikipedia super contributors, photo editors who buy micro-stock, the folks who created Bar Camp, Innocentive (Eli Lilly), Crowdspirit, the photo agency Scoopt, etc...

In all, the crowd conducted 80 interviews.

Crowdsourced journalism has been done around the world in various guises, but what makes Wired's effort stand out is the clear and well managed editorial process. The "crowd" were guided into the assignment, briefed and helped, rather than just left to go for it.

Like an effort to tap into users, it helps when the brief is good.

Think about how other publications can use "crowds" as "research army" to help journalists piece together elements for stories and as additional content that can be accessed by readers looking for the source material.
At http://cola.trnd.com members of the word-of-mouth-network trnd (Munich) are re-developing Open Source Cola. It's a soda designed to work like Wikipedia.

Everybody can be part of the process just by adding ideas and comments. All participants take part in the final recipe, decide which ingredients will be used and how the new product will find its way to the consumer. They discuss the different ideas for the recipe as well as a strategy to launch and sale the Cola online.

Originally Open Cola was an experiment to explain the principle of Open-Source software. The Toronto-based Open Cola Company became better known for the drink, than the software it was supposed to promote. Up until 2004, it had sold about 150,000 cans of Open Cola. Since the company's demise, the Open Cola recipe is now under GNU General Public License, which means everyone can modify, produce and sell it.

The trnd company have turned Open Cola into an open source project, providing a wiki, a blog and the FAQ site. It started by analyzing the German Cola market, then moved on to setting up goals and a timing plan.

At the moment, visitors to http://cola.trnd.com prefer a Cola with organic ingredients and alternative sweetener (like honey or maple syrup). There are also a couple of other ideas around, including the suggestion that the Cola should be sold as a concentrate with a variety of flavors and a number of different suggestions for a brand name.

Written by Claudia Dolle, who's currently interning at Influx.