The State of

Crowdsourcing in 2016

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This State of Crowdsourcing 2016 trend report, based on an updated
dataset and a years worth of learnings, will allow anyone interested in
marketing and innovation to assess the use of crowdsourcing. We have
still looked at the list of Best Global Brands, as defined by Interbrand, as
well as an expanded set of FMCG companies1.
From brand marketers to agency directors, industry analysts and market research professionals, its findings can help better understand how brands are
using crowd creativity for marketing. The next pages will outline the trends in
detail, but for busy or time-conscious leaders, below are some of the most important findings:
Amongst the Best Global Brands, the FMCG sector has grown their crowdsourcing usage compared to other sectors in 2015

Usage of crowdsourcing grew by 30% amongst the Best Global Brands that have
been using crowdsourcing heavily since 2004

In 2015, top FMCG companies grew their usage of creative crowdsourcing by 27%
versus 2014
These FMCG companies ideation efforts almost doubled (+95%), whereas content creation decreased (-12%)
In a second part, we also outline some key examples of crowdsourced ideation projects, as well
as a milestone that marked the last year. One of them was the last edition of Doritos Crash The
Super Bowl video contest, which came to an end after its 10th installment, and the subsequent
crowdsourced launch of a permanent ideation platform called Legion Of The Bold. We conclude
the report with an outlook into the future of open source creativity for brands and agencies.

See the Methodology section, at the end of this report, for more details.

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

INTRODUCTION
Last year, we published the first ever Crowdsourcing Report that provided objective, quantifiable
data about the creative crowdsourcing market. The State of Crowdsourcing 2015 trend report quickly picked up industry and media interest, having been downloaded massively on eYeka.com and
receiving coverage in publications such as Forbes or Marketing Magazine, its findings presented
on stages from Paris to Geneva or Singapore. The #CSReport2015 was embraced by experts and
analysts on social media, and a number of articles have been published to enrich the conversation
around crowdsourced creativity.
The success of the first edition led us to consider the publication of an updated Report. This State
of Crowdsourcing 2016 edition is based on the same data as the previous one, but the dataset
has been extended2 to cover additional FMCG companies the biggest sector when it comes to
creative crowdsourcing usage and it also includes data from the year 2015, allowing us to have a
fresh perspective on the state of the industry in 2016.

This edition is based on an updated and extended dataset to have a fresh

perspective on the state of the industry
We have created the #CSReport2016 hashtag to allow everyone to have an interactive discussion
to explore the updated trends. Without further ado, here are the latest trends about brands usage
of creative crowdsourcing.

Extending the dataset causes some changes compared to the State of Crowdsourcing 2015 trend report. For example, in the 2015 edition, crowdsourcing usage by the 10 biggest FMCG companies increased by 48% between 2013 and 2014. In the 2016 edition, the increase is slightly lower with
30%, but this is because it is based on 16 FMCG companies data, and the progression for that extended group is more moderate.

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

THE FMCG SECTOR EXTENDS ITS CROWDSOURCING USE

Crowdsourcing has traditionally been pioneered, embraced and championed by tech brands like
Microsoft, Google or Samsung. Among the Best Global Brands, these were the ones that most used
distributed creativity since the mid-2000s - even Apple jumped on the bandwagon! But in more recent years, brands from the FMCG sector overtook tech brands as the most active crowdsourcing
users, as we reported in last years Crowdsourcing Report. Is this still true today?

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

Both sectors seem to have found value in sourcing creativity from the crowd. Brands from the
Media/Entertainment sector seem to have woken up late, but are on a steep upward trend too.
Others, however, seem to have decreased their crowdsourcing efforts. The above numbers indicate
that Automotive, Retail, Finance/Insurance or Industry/Energy brands have been lowering their
crowdsourcing usage for a number of years. When it comes to individual brands, rather than
industry verticals, the updated data confirms the leadership of Coca-Cola in using crowd creativity
for marketing and innovation.

Based on updated data, adding initiatives throughout the last decade and adding crowdsourcing
initiatives sponsored by the worlds most valuable brands in 2015, we find that FMCG brands have
kept growing their usage of crowdsourcing. While tech brands are back to the level of 2013, FMCG
brands like Coca-Cola, Danone or Nestl have used creative crowdsourcing more than last year,
extending the sectors lead.

Our updated data shows that FMCG brands have grown their crowdsourcing usage in 2015

Figure 2: The Best Global Brands that most use creative crowdsourcing

The worlds most valuable brands have been crowdsourcing creativity in a major way in 2015,
showing important increases between the end of 2014 and 2015 (over 30% on average for the
top 20 brands listed above). Among these top brands, Coca-Cola (+20%) but also Nestl (+41%),
Hewlett-Packard (+42%) and Ford (+36%) have significantly increased their crowdsourcing activity,
with the most impressive increase coming from Johnson & Johnson (+186%), who almost tripled its
crowdsourcing efforts in just a year. This finding led us to include the eponymous parent company
in our dataset of FMCG companies for 2015.

Figure 1: Evolution of crowdsourcing usage by the Best Global Brands, broken down by sector

Brands that already used crowdsourcing in a significant way from 2004 to

2014 increased their usage by over 30% in 2015 alone

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

Last years Crowdsourcing Report highlighted that the top 10 FMCG companies had increased their
crowdsourcing usage by 48% between 2013 and 2014. For this years report, we have not only
updated the numbers, but also added some major FMCG companies to the roster and retroactively added their crowdsourcing history too. From 10 companies last year, our data now includes
16 companies as we have added important innovators and advertisers like Johnson & Johnson,
Heineken or Colgate-Palmolive. How has their crowdsourcing usage evolved in the last three years?

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

The leader is still Procter & Gamble, with Unilever in a strong second place. The top accelerator
is the Johnson & Johnson company, and most of this increase is due to the companys growing
collaboration with Tongal, a platform for professional crowdsourced production, to create video
content for its different brands. The below graph shows all 16 companies of our dataset, ranked in
descending order of crowdsourcing usage in 2015, and how often they crowdsourced creativity in
the last 3 years.

Figure 3: Crowdsourcing usage by top FMCG companies between 2013 and 2015

The above chart shows that crowdsourcing usage by the top 16 FMCG companies grew steadily in
the past years, with +30% year-on-year between 2013 and 2014, and +27% between 2014 and 2015.
Almost all of them have been sourcing creativity from consumer crowds in 2015, with just Diageo
and SABMiller not increasing their track record in 2015 compared to the year before.

Crowdsourcing usage by the top FMCG companies grew by 27% between

2014 and 2015

Figure 4: Crowdsourcing usage by leading FMCG companies in the last 3 years

We can see that the most active crowdsourcing companies P&G, Unilever, PepsiCo and consorts
have used it more in 2015 than in any of the previous years. This confirms that FMCG companies have found value in this form of strategic ideation of production. Others however AB Inbev,
Heineken or Diageo have lowered their activity on crowdsourcing platforms, indicating that not
all companies have managed to meaningfully integrate the crowds creativity in their marketing, or
that they are still in learning mode.

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

BRANDS & COMPANIES INCREASINGLY USE

CROWDSOURCING FOR IDEATION
One of the other main trends highlighted in last years Crowdsourcing Report was the rise of crowdsourcing for ideation. While brands have always crowdsourced more video content than ideas,
it appeared that the latter was on a steep upward slope. Our updated data confirms this trend:
between 2014 and 2015, the top 16 FMCG companies ideation efforts almost doubled (+95%),
whereas crowdsourced video content creation efforts decreased (-12%), indicating that consumer
goods companies are finding more relevance in crowdsourced ideation.

FMCG companies ideation efforts almost doubled whereas crowdsourced

video content creation efforts decreased

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

New product/service development

Believe it or not, chewing gum is being challenged by social media and
other digital activities, making Millennial and Gen Z consumers less attracted to this category. Trident, a Mondelez brand, recognized this trend
and asked the crowd to bring to life chewing gum in a digital format,
through games or any other application that would help restore engagement of Millennials with the brand. From well over 100 ideas submitted,
the team is now working on a final set of refined ideas.

Exploration of communication concepts

Creatives from over 20 countries have suggested ways to visualize and
communicate product benefits to help Quaker Stila Cereal, a PepsiCo
brand, introduce its key ingredient made out of fiber and protein. After
running a contest, planners helped the brand make sense of the collective creative intelligence of the crowd, and some of the 50+ ideas
directly inspired the new design and naming of the cereal box with the
new ingredient.

Ideation for product design creation

The crowdsourcing platform Jovoto has helped Victorinox generate
consumer-designed limited editions of the Swiss Army Knife, one of the
worlds most famous Swiss icons. The 2015 edition of the contest asked
amateur and professional designers alike to redesign the 58mm Victorinox pocket knife, in a way that would be understandable worldwide. The
project garnered over 1,200 submissions, 15 of which were licensed by
Victorinox to move into production.

Creative exploration for retail innovation

Figure 5: Share of ideas vs. content crowdsourced by leading FMCG companies, 2013 - 2015

What exactly does ideation mean? What type of ideas do brands and companies source from the
crowd? Ideation refers to any conceptualization of various elements of the marketing mix, be it
product or service (mostly referred to as innovation), communication messages, packaging solutions (be it graphic or structural), brand and product naming, consumer engagement initiatives
(often referred to as marketing activation), point of sale materials, etc.

Ideation is paramount to create disruptive and innovative products, services

or campaigns
Thanks to crowdsourcing, brand teams are able to tap into far greater breadth and depth of consumer relevant ideas, because they are allowed to participate (and thus influence) in any challenge
no matter what it may be3. Below are some examples of recent crowdsourced ideation initiatives:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tissue-session-100-ideas-from-25-countries-julie-rozek

In-store displays are simple, standard and pre-packed in order to be easily assembled and filled. In a joint effort, Cadbury and Oreo challenged
consumers to propose new store displays that can be used by various
snack brands to create a mouth-watering and convenient journey for
shoppers. Over 50 creatives from 24 countries submitted designs, feeding an ambitious program to reinvent the shopper experience.

Crowdsourcing ideas for activation

In a bid to make Millennials enjoy more of its ice cream products, Unilever crowdsourced ideas from digital to activation or in-store experiences to better connect with Millennials. Over 130 activation ideas
were submitted in less than 10 days, allowing the company to extract
the most interesting ideas and test them in record time, with a brief to
consumer test results of circa 20 days.

10

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

CROWDSOURCING MILESTONES & WHAT THEY MEAN

FOR THE FUTURE
In last year's Crowdsourcing Report, we featured some notable crowdsourcing campaigns to illustrate the value that open creativity can bring to brands and agencies. Indeed 2015 saw some
important milestones, like the end of Doritos' annual Crash The Super Bowl contest, which are paramount to understand the current state and the future of the industry. Here are three key initiatives
that have shaped the past year.

Doritos ends Crash The Super Bowl & starts Legion Of The Bold
Since the early days of crowd creativity, Doritos' annual Crash The Super Bowl contest was almost
always cited as a pioneering example of branded crowdsourcing. Since late 2006, the triangular
chips brand has been asking consumers from the US (first) and globally (later) to submit advertisements for its product, with the best ones being aired at the Super Bowl's halftime show. But after
its 10th installment, announced in 2015 with the winner being aired at the 2016 Super Bowl, the
participative campaign came to an end.

Figure 6: Created by Jacob Chase of Los Angeles, California, "Doritos Dogs" was the winner of the last Crash The
Super Bowl edition in 2016 (image via Doritos4)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZfo7wfojeQ

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

"We've had a tremendous run with the program," said Jeff Klein, VP of marketing
at Frito-Lay5, "the Doritos brand sparked a marketing industry in terms of crowdsourcing. 'Crash the Super Bowl' has played a major role in legitimizing consumer content." But after more than 32,000 submissions in 10 editions, the brand
needed to find a new way to engage its evolving audience. It needed a fresher
way to engage its target consumers.
"Brands have to keep evolving with time. If you look at when we started the
program, millennial consumers were the target [and] theyve grown up, Doritos
CMO Ram Krishnan told Fortune6. Our Doritos target is [now] Gen Z consumers
and theyre already content creators, Krishnan said, "what we want to evolve to
is people can create content throughout the year. Which is why Doritos asked
one of its agencies to create a permanent ideation platform called Legion Of
The Bold, on which consumers are invited to ideate around tasks as diverse as
tweets during the Big Game or the name of its latest Doritos flavor7.
"Brands have to keep evolving with time [and] what we want to evolve to is people
can create content throughout the year (Ram Krishnan, Doritos CMO)

Figure 7: Some of the tasks listed on Legion Of The Bold (screenshot of legionofthebold.com)

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/doritos-ending-its-crash-super-bowl-contest-not-one-last-hurrah-166784
http://fortune.com/2016/01/29/doritos-crash-the-super-bowl-contest/
http://yannigroth.com/2015/03/13/how-doritos-is-using-its-new-community-for-marketing-csreport2015/

11

12

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

The most recent challenges of Legion Of The Bold even expanded to other brands like Lay's, which
asked the crowd for ideas for its next 15-second TVC. Since its launch, the platform has hosted
over 30 ideation tasks, illustrating how brands are increasingly sourcing ideas from the crowd. The
company has shared few insights about its ambitions with the ideation platform, but it may be
possible that it will become a complementary source of ideas to traditional ideation methods and
established crowdsourcing partnerships.

The end of Crash The Super Bowl and launch of Legion Of The Bold marks a milestone, symbolically ending the era of crowdsourcing as a PR and interest driver, and starting that of crowdsourcing
as an always-on consumer involvement and ideation mechanism.

P&G involved Millennials to make young consumers more attune to its

SK-II brand
When SK-II, P&Gs premium skincare brand, wanted to bring to life #ChangeDestiny, its biggest empowerment campaign to date, and to connect with a younger audience, they turned to consumers
from the eYeka community for help. With 75% of eYekas community members being Millennials
themselves, what better way to discover what makes then attune to the brand across touchpoints?
The first SK-II project was a video contest looking for emotional synergy with younger consumers.
Additionally to fresh and diverse ideas, SK-II needed fewer pieces of content that, whilst delivering
a high degree of freshness, would also be closely on-brand. The Future Me video for example,
created by a young Ukrainian filmmaker from eYeka's community, was not only the most shareable
video of the campaign, but it also became a reference when it comes to user-generated content in
the entire category.

Figure 8: The "Future Me" video was used on SK-II's official web channels and ushered a broader collaboration with
eYeka's community (image via SK-II.com.sg8)

Building on that success, SK-II used eYekas community for a number of additional projects for
strategic ideation and packaging design purposes. Since the first project, SK-II and eYeka have
worked on 13 projects together (video content creation, packaging design, visual design, interactive platform design, retail experience), all meant to get consumer-created input to bring to life
the #ChangeDestiny platform in engaging ways to make SK-II more attractive to Millennials. SK-IIs
projects have engaged hundreds of creative individuals who have submitted over 1,000 ideas, all
reflecting todays consumers expectations of what a prestige skin care brand should offer.

SK-IIs projects have engaged hundreds of creatives who submitted

1,000+ ideas reflecting consumers expectations of what a prestige brand
should offer

http://www.sk-ii.com.sg/en/whats-new/in-the-spotlight/future-skin.aspx

13

14

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

UNILEVER ANNOUNCES PLANS TO LEVERAGE

CROWDSOURCED IDEAS TEN-TIMES MORE BY 2020
Already featured in last year's Crowdsourcing Report, and a pioneering crowdsourcing user since
its 2011 strategic partnership with eYeka, Unilever remains convinced of the collective creative intelligence of consumers. In June 2015, Unilever announced9 the launch of Unilever Foundry IDEAS,
a new hub to centrally organize all its crowdsourcing briefs and to allow the FMCG leader to increase its use as an idea-generation mechanism tenfold by 2020.

Foundry IDEAS will allow Unilever to increase its use of crowdsourced

ideation tenfold by 2020
Crowdsourcing is seen as an efficient way to help Unilever to double its business by 2020 whilst
reducing its environmental impact. The FMCG giant calls consumers but also designers, students
or startups to submit innovative ideas in order to get a chance to be rewarded, collaborate with the
business and have a globally positive impact.

"We're five years into our ten year Unilever Sustainable Living Plan to make our
operations and brands more sustainable," said Sue Garrard, Senior Vice President of Sustainable Business Development and Communications at Unilever.
"We have made huge strides in our factories and with our suppliers. The next
stage is to find people with new and innovative ideas so that together we can
help transform the way we live our daily lives. Foundry IDEAS is our new platform
to meet those people who can be part of the wider solution."

https://foundry.unilever.com/unilever-foundry-launches-global-crowdsourcing-community-foundry-ideas

Figure 9: A screenshot of Unilevers Foundry platform, on which all crowdosurcing briefs are being centralized (image
via foundry.unilever.com)

https://foundry.unilever.com/unilever-foundry-launches-global-crowdsourcing-community-foundry-ideas

15

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

16

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

CONCLUSION
The worlds most active innovators and advertisers, FMCG companies, remain the heaviest users of
the open creativity model, driven by pioneers such as P&G which invented the Connect&Develop10
program in the early 2000s already and Unilever, which is heavily pushing innovation through
crowdsourced discovery.
While the early years of crowdsourcing have been all about consumer engagement and content
creation, another usage that we already highlighted in the last years Crowdsourcing Report
crystallizes clearly: crowdsourcing for ideation. This years updated Crowdsourcing Reports
findings underlines the rise of crowdsourced ideation. Not only has this Crowdsourcing Report confirmed the continuous growth of crowdsourcing usage by brands and companies,
but it has also provided an impression of what the future of creative ideation looks like.
At the start of the Millennium, conversations about open source and crowdsourced
creativity were all about opposing the existing and the new models (remember that
Wireds headline in the June 2006 edition was Crowdsourcing: A Billion Amateurs
Want Your Job). But in recent years, we have seen that openness has simply become part of the existing ecosystem, it hasnt replaced any existing industry or
profession. The consumer is becoming a part of the worlds biggest companies
and agencies, which is a profoundly positive way to co-create value together.
What does the future hold? What learnings will a possible Crowdsourcing Report in 2017 underline? We invite the readers of this report to provide their
observations and points of views by joining the conversation at #CSreport2016.

Join the conversation at #CSreport2016

10

http://www.pgconnectdevelop.com/

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

18

ABOUT THIS REPORT

Methodology

The methodology, identical to the Crowdsourcing Trend Report 2015, is explained here:

Definition and scope of crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is defined as the process of posting a problem online, having a vast number of individuals offering
solutions to the problem, awarding the winning ideas with some form of a bounty, and using this input for innovation, marketing or communication. Among the various forms of crowdsourcing that exist, we limit the scope of this
timeline to creative crowdsourcing i.e. distributed creative problem solving, focusing on crowdsourcing were peoples'
creative problem-solving skills are solicited. The most common forms of such initiatives are innovation tournaments, idea contests, creative competitions or branded web-platforms for idea generation. We have also limited the
events of these timelines to crowdsourcing initiated and leveraged directly by brands for their innovation or marketing strategies.

Data about the Best Global Brands usage of crowdsourcing

Data related to brands usage of crowdsourcing comes from the timelines listed below (except for 2015), which have
been created by Yannig Roth, Marketing Manager at eYeka and PhD at University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne. The
original timeline was released in September 2012, before being split into yearly timelines because of the high volume
of crowdsourcing initiatives. You can browse through these timelines on:

Crowdsourcing by World's Best Global Brands Before 2011

Crowdsourcing by World's Best Global Brands in 2011
Crowdsourcing by World's Best Global Brands in 2012
Crowdsourcing by World's Best Global Brands in 2013
Crowdsourcing by World's Best Global Brands in 2014
Crowdsourcing by World's Best Global Brands in 2015

These timelines gather all contests launched by the world's most valuable brands, which are the 100 brands included
in Interbrand's Best Global Brands ranking (our basis is the 2011 edition of the ranking, and the timeline will be
updated with new entrants of the subsequent rankings). Note that the reference criteria of this dataset is the brand,
which is defined by a name, term, design or other feature that distinguishes one product from others. For example,
Coca-Cola or Sprite are two distinct brands which belong to the Coca-Cola Company.

AUTHORS
Yannig Roth is Marketing Manager of eYeka, where his role is to make
crowdsourcing easy to understand and to engage with, as well as to keep
an attentive eye on the crowdsourcing market. Yannig holds a Master in digital marketing at ESSCA and a PhD in marketing at University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne (France). As a researcher, his interests include online marketing, crowdsourcing and consumer creativity. @YannigRoth

Franois Petavy is CEO of eYeka, has been focusing on the convergence

between technology, marketing and content for more than 13 years. Before
joining eYeka early 2008, he was a Director at eBay, in charge of developing
the French marketplace on new areas of business. Franois past positions
also include being a Producer at Ubisoft (a video game publisher), and VP
Project Management for AGENCY.COM:Paris (a digital agency). @FPetavy

Mario Braz de Matos is Chief Solutions & Marketing Officer of eYeka. He has
a solid Marketing, Business Development and General Management career,
with 20 years of experience across Unilever, Nokia and his own start-ups. His
marketing experience included managing established and challenger brands
across key markets. Global in mindset, he has benefited from living in over
10 countries and speaking 5 languages. He is a challenger with passion and
experience, who strives to remain intelligently nave. @MarioBrazdMatos

Data about 16 leading FMCG companies usage of crowdsourcing

Data related to FMCG companies usage of crowdsourcing has been gathered by researchers at eYeka, who looked up
publicly available data regarding contests launched by 16 major FMCG companies (the 2015 Trend Report looked at
10 companies) since 2011 on four leading crowdsourcing platforms. The FMCG companies are General Mills, Reckitt
Benckiser, PepsiCo, Unilever, Mondelez, The Coca-Cola Company, Nestl, Procter & Gamble, Kelloggs, AB Inbev, SAB
Miller, Diageo, Heineken, Johnson & Johnson, Colgate-Palmolive and Kimberly-Clark; the crowdsourcing platforms
are eYeka, Mofilm, Tongal and Zooppa.

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016

Questions about data and analyses

The trends presented in this report are based on objective and verifiable data gathered by the principal author, Yannig
Roth, with the sole objective of understanding the evolution of crowdsourcing over time. All information contained
herein is obtained from sources believed to be accurate and reliable. For more detailed information about the methodology, dont hesitate to look at the Crowdsourcing Trend Report 2015.
Because of the possibility of human and mechanical error as well as other factors, neither eYeka nor Crowd Companies are responsible for any errors or omissions. All raw data used to compile this report can be requested from
and questions can be asked to the principal author through https://en.eyeka.com/contact. You can also use the
#CSReport2016 hashtag on Twitter to discuss this reports findings.

ABOUT EYEKA
eYeka is the World's biggest creative playground!
At eYeka, we believe in the collective intelligence and exponential creative power of crowds. We
nurture a global community of more than 330,000 creative individuals around the world who deliver fresh ideas and original content by participating in crowdsourcing competitions. By combining
the creativity of our community with the expertise of an agency, we fuel the world's best brands
innovation roadmaps with relevant product and experience concepts, offer fresh perspectives on
packaging and point-of-sale designs, ideate original campaign ideas and create shareable video
content. Discover how we boost the marketing ROI of leading brands such as Unilever, P&G, Mondelez, Coca-Cola, Nestl, Airbnb or Toyota on eYeka.com.

19

The State of
Crowdsourcing in 2016