The Who, What, & Why of Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is not only a way for companies to gain insight from their consumer but it is also a way for them to use the publics intelligence to complete the businesses tasks at hand. Instead of using business funds and time to plan advertisements that may or may not connect to the consumer, they can use the insight from their consumers for practically no cost at all. 

A successful example of a crowdsourced ad is the Doritos Crash the Superbowl ad competition. Viewers were asked to enter in a Doritos ad in chances to win the chance of their work being shown during the Superbowl Halftime, here are a few examples:

Another example of crowdsourcing advertisement was when Starbucks invited their customers to decorate their iconic white cup anyway they wanted and share it on social media sites such as Instagram and Facebook. 

Crowdsourcing comes with its disadvantages but thankfully the good outweighs the bad. Companies aim to build better relationships with their clients, viewers, and consumers and crowdsourcing allows that. By working with the target audience to develop ad's they wish to see and will make the biggest impact on them, companies can develop and work with their target market to both satisfy the customer and their marketing goals. 

Instead of paying private companies or using valuable time brainstorming their own ads, they can use their viewers with little resources and costs. Crowdsourcing also allows many people from all walks of life to use their creativity to develop ad's that may not have been developed through a professional ad company. By letting viewers develop ads for your company, it allows the potential for new customers who may not have used or known about your company before hand. 

The biggest critics of crowdsourcing are the the consumers themselves. Just like any ad, companies put their name behind ideas that they believe will get them a positive results. While paying big companies to form advertisements for your company, they don't always get it right and sometimes those dollars can go to waste in an ineffective ad. However, with crowdsourcing, companies put their name behind ideas that come directly from the consumers which most of the times comes with positive results because they are from the people the companies were trying to target in the first place. Crowdsourcing is a way for people and small groups to get together and compete for the best ad with little to no pay but instead a chance to develop advertisements that they, as the consumer, want to see and maybe even the chance to get recognized by the masses. People often complain about annoying or boring ads but with crowdsourcing, companies give the people two things they want, the chance to create ad's they want to see and the change to get involved and give their opinion. 

Unpaid Tobacco Spokesperson & You Didn't Even Realize

With Tobacco companies racking up the dollars, why should they waste any of their hard earned profit on advertising? With the amount of non-traditional, free advertising done by celebrities and people around the world, it's at no surprise if big tobacco companies felt this way. Through this new "Unpaid Tobacco Spokesperson" ad by Truth, they are showing that there are negative effects of the tobacco use by celebrities because they are in the public eye and tobacco companies are banking on their actions.

Theories

Verbal & Visual - concrete and realistic - Smoking is a trend around the world so using verbal and visual cues to portray a concrete and realistic portrayal of tobacco use is what the ad used to reach it's target audience. 

Means to End - This ad contains a message : Non-smoking/quit smoking -- healthy -- self-respect/wisdom/comfortable life/happiness. This ad is trying to get viewers to understand that not only are people unconsciously supporting tobacco use and promoting it but also coming off as smoking is okay, which it's not: smoking is unhealthy and it needs to end.

Leverage Point

Celebrities Smoking Cigarettes

Tag Line

"Unpaid Tobacco Spokesperson"

Appeal Strategy

1. Musical Appeal - The fast-paced music brings in the viewer but particularly gains the attention of a younger generation who likes this type of music. Because it sounds like music they would listen to on their own, it is easily stuck in their minds. 

2.  Rational Appeal - With no spoken words, this advertisement forces the viewer to be active in reading and watching the entire ad to get the message. There aren't any puns, hyperboles, or dialog, just the straight facts about celebrities unknowingly being unpaid spokespeople for big tobacco companies.

Messaging Strategy
Affective and emotional messaging strategies are both apparent in this ad. The ad gives off a sense of influence that try's to connect the viewer to their campaign by making it relevant and allowing viewers to get involved. It is also emotional because it connects something our society views as important and influential, celebrities, with an issue that many people see eye-to-eye on, smoking.

Executional Framework

The executional framework of this ad is informational. For the most part, the only thing these Truth ad's do is tell the facts straight up, as is. The facts about tobacco use and it's effects on the body, the environment, and others are so shocking that they usually don't need to do anything more than tell the truth about tobacco.

Main Message

When someone wears or uses products, they are essentially a walking billboard for whatever company/brand/product. The main message of this particular ad is aimed towards celebrities and how their actions influence our society.

Effective?

Yes, it's straightforward and tells people what's going on and that it should end.

1. Visual Consistency - The repeated tagline, music, and views of celebrities smoking.

2. Repeated Tagline - the tagline is the same throughout the majority of the ad.

3. Simplicity - it's simple and straightforward. There are no distractions or changes in scenes until the end where the facts and call to action are shown. 

Target Audience

It's like they say, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks". The anti-smoking campaigns obviously want to reach a wide target audience, because smoking isn't necessarily specific to one generation, one race, one sex but the probably is tobacco is addicting and if you've been smoking it for 20 years, you're less likely to quit than someone who has dabbled in it occasionally. This particular ad is targeting the younger generations, the people that would recognize Rihanna, Orlando Bloom, and Chris Brown. This generation is the most easily influenced, especially by social media. By targeting this specific generation, the anti-smoking campaigns are able to potentially stop a person in this target audience from smoking or at least make them think twice about what they are doing and why they are doing it.