Mark,

Great reversal. What if you couldn't buy newspapers? Then you wouldn't be able to rationalize "I'm not going to pay for a sub, when I can buy just one", and you couldn't read somebody else's. Maybe 30% would pay then.

-- Axle Davids

This is a rare example of a high quality outcome.

I've been following the crowd-sourcing model for creative for two years now. And I've even tried out a crowd for a client project. If you are going to try crowdsourcing you really need to keep a few things in mind:

1) The crowd wants to create. Few if any will care about your brand promise, position, and personality.

2) The crowd can give you lots of ideas, but it is your job and a lot of work to go through them all and decide if they suit your brand.

3) If you don't know your brand, you are at risk of the creative ultimately determining your strategy, a serious marketing misstep.

4) Find the right crowd. The very nature of Etsy, and the loyalty of its visitors is a great breeding ground for quality creative design. Don't assume quality from any crowd.

5) Some tasks, like naming a company or product, can be inspired by a crowd but few of them are also going to do your trademark due diligence or check for cultural or linguistic issues. Same goes for ensuring that your logo isn't infringing on another design.

6) Beware of those who are gaming the system. Some crowdsourcing sites allow the crowd to pick the winner. "Gaming" is when members strategically vote their ideas to win. I saw this happen last year on a naming site.

7) Crowdsourcing upsets a lot of professional service providers, especially on LinkeIn. Whenever somebody on LinkedIn offers a prize for a name or logo, passionate professionals, be they namers or designers or others, will jump in and get upset at the contest holder. It doesn't help your brand to have these folks getting vocal at you on Linkedin.

So by all means try crowdsourcing, but remember it can't replace the hard work required to build a successful brand.

We just received the Forrester report on Adaptive Marketing yesterday. I read it on the subway home. The recommendation that marketing take on a federated model, with more empowerment all round for making marketing decisions could bode well for the brand manager or be his/her new level of hell. Personally, I found that the singling out of the "brand manager" role was not really particularly meaningful. The report basically spells out a new reality for ANYONE in Marketing.

Apple's success is very much about controlling every aspect of the customer experience. They won't start using Social Media until they can do so with the same aplomb as all their other touchpoints. (Do I get extra points for getting some french in there?)

Here's another (far-fetched?) explanation: the recession. The US was hit harder than Canada. This left those south of the border with more time to dabble in SM, see the light and spread the word. On top of that, US firms had to reduce their traditional advertising spend but have maintained or increased online spend. Add the American flair for risk taking and you've got a good milieu for Social Media to take off.