What I find odd about businesses who miss their mark in the social media area, is that where they employ smart strategies in traditional media, they often just whack a half baked notion out to crowd sourcing without thinking through their goals properly.

Recently in Australia Toyota had a “short film” competition backfire ( http://mumbrella.com.au/how-saatchi-saatchis-toyota-social-media-disaster-unfolded-14257). First thing I query is whether their competition is the right type to engage their target audience.

Second issue was that, while it was meant to be a competition to engage the public, the advertising company behind it sent out an email to production houses they knew inviting them to pass on the word to their contacts – as a result they got a bunch of highly polished “short films” that looked like ads from professionals wanting to showcase their own creativity. This created a backlash because it wasn’t a flat playing ground for the public.

There was thirdly a question over the winning “film” which looked like a highly polished ad but with the difference that it could be deemed highly sexist, in poor taste, and of more amusement to young men than the young female target audience of this particular car.

When it comes to indie filmmakers, I note that part of the success of The Age of Stupid came down to them smartly targeted crowdfunding from the very same people who would be interested in the topic matter of their film. Many other crowdfunding & crowdsourcing attempts are chasing other indie filmmakers for dollars, rather than thinking about who is their actual audience for the film.

And, in the case of crowdsourcing, there are frequently blurry lines about whether they are trying to gain quality input or audience participation. Thank you for this article addressing the topic.

With reference to the 1:9:90 model – you’re saying that when it comes to engaging fans, make sure there’s a range of opportunities for contribution & reward: something that will appeal to the “hardcore” 1% and something that will appeal to the less active/less confident/less able so that they’re not left out. I agree completely. In fact if the engagement is seen as a continuing process (as it should for an indie project) rather than a one-off activity or competition then you’re looking to get the audience to move up levels of engagement – from the observer to the contributor to the advocate.
Good point, thank you.

By the way – Shooting People is also US based and has a massive New York community so I don’t think it’s a UK vs US thing!