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Are Millennials Crowdsourcing Themselves Out Of Jobs?

This article is more than 10 years old.

Coca-Cola wants you to design a new logo. Videogame developer Namco Bandai needs help redesigning Pac-Man. Lay’s seeks a new potato chip flavor. Once upon a time, companies with full-time employees invested their own money and resources to develop these projects. Now, they call it crowdsourcing, throw up a request on their Facebook page, and get their “fans” to do it for little to no cost.

This concept of businesses getting free labor is not a simple tale of exploitation made easier through technology. Crowdsourcing’s popularity wouldn’t happen without willing participants — Lay’s has already received more than eight million potato chip flavor submissions. Plus, today’s Millennials are oftentimes eager for these interactions. “We feel so disconnected with the corporate world these days,” says Laura Lavi of Zing Revolution, which sells crowdsourced images as vinyl covers. “Right now, it’s really us versus them. Crowdsourcing allows [a company] to create a dialogue with us. It humanizes the corporation.”

Yet, it’s hard to ignore the fact that crowdsourcing may have the unintended consequence of eliminating professional positions that are typically filled by entry-level, Millennial-aged workers. Or to borrow a popular cliché: why buy the cow (graphic designer) when you can get the milk (logo) for free?

While it’s a challenge to directly link crowdsourcing to current unemployment figures, it joins the shift to freelance and outsourced professionals as legitimate reasons for job displacement. Plus, it’s easy to infer how crowdsourcing is disrupting creative fields, including advertising, design, and data research.

Ironically, crowdsourcing participants may be most responsible for hindering their full-time job prospects. While there are examples on user-generated projects on both ends of the extreme, a majority of crowdsourced material is equal to or better than professionally-produced content. Companies are obviously going to prefer the lower-cost or no-cost option when the end result is the same. Plus, companies are eliminating many of their upfront costs and risks, since crowdsourcers are responsible for developing and executing projects on their own dime.

Start-ups and small businesses were the first to embrace crowdsourcing as survival tactics, says Ilana Grossman at Gust. “They can’t afford traditional agencies so they use it very actively. They built their own brand identity [using crowdsourcing, including designing] their logo and image.”

And now, billion-dollar brands are increasingly taking advantage of user-generated opportunities. MoFilm is a platform that directly connects filmmakers with a growing roster of brands including Campbell’s, HP, AT&T , and McDonald’s. The company is designed to eliminate the traditional ad agency since “multiple layers of bureaucracy and administration… waters down creativity and inflates costs in traditional processes.”

As such, MoFilm and Chevrolet worked together for a Super Bowl commercial that garnered 80 entrants; all able to deliver spots costing less than $50,000. By contrast, if Chevy went with a traditional creative agency, each ad would cost between $500,000 to $1 million. “It’s evident that the old process is not working with the way start-ups and today’s smaller companies operate,” says Grossman. “They need fast and nimble, but [creative] agencies have large [overhead costs] and processes that are non-negotiable.”

Although crowdsource participants may not receive health benefits or paid sick leave from companies, they are increasingly receiving something for their efforts. E-commerce portal Café Press, which sells consumer-generated designs, pays contributors 10% of their retail sales. Coca-Cola is paying $5,000 to its logo design winner. Lay’s awards its winner $1 million or one-percent of the chip flavor’s 2013 net sales, whichever is higher. (Either award is a rounding error for a brand that annually sells more than $9 billion in potato chips.)

Most crowdsourcing participants, however, view their projects as opportunities to gain experience and exposure. “I am getting a lot more inquiries from freelance designers who say ‘Hey, I am a professional designer [by selling via Café Press]’ and they want help getting to the next level of interest,” says Café Press’ Ty Simpson.

“I think [crowdsourcing] has opened a lot of eyes that what fans come up with is very effective,” he says. “There’s no way a group of creative people will come out with something better than a true fan who really understands the brand.” To this end, when Café Press teamed with Summit Entertainment to sell Twilight t-shirts, a fan-generated design sold more than $1 million in merchandise and outsold the studio-designed version.

Despite crowdsourcing’s success and prevalence, there seems to be a limit to its power. Ad agency 72AndSunny’s Larry Lac says his clients look to this concept as a content extension rather than using it as a foundation. “When you rely on users for everything, it can spiral out of control,” he says, citing how pranksters recently hijacked a Mountain Dew contest. “Good brands invite conversation, but with perimeters, that hopefully stays on strategy and on message.”

Professional ad agencies and middlemen still serve a purpose, particularly as gatekeepers. “You will see companies do crowdsourcing to test an idea, then turn to an agency for refinement,” says Gust’s Grossman. “But major brands won’t use crowdsourcing in non-controlled ways. They might allow for a logo or slogan, but nothing that will touch the core brand.” Lac adds, “In an ideal world, professionally generated content should inspire people to make their own. It’s a duality thing. Content should not be seen as exclusive to one side or the other, but live together,” says Lac. And Millennials also hope that  crowdsourcing and full-time positions are not mutually exclusive.

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