What happens when the contest is over?

Community idea competitions are a new way of life online. From the Aviva Community Fund to Pepsi Refresh to Member’s Project, there’s a recognition that the model of corporate funding + citizen activism is a winning formula for creating impact on both brand and world. But one of the questions I keep getting asked is what’s the role of government in the equation?

That’s a big question that I don’t think the world of crowdsourcing community has quite figured out yet.

Cause Marketing is Not CSR

Here’s an important level-set in the discussion of these platforms – branded cause competitions are a form of cause marketing, not CSR (corporate social responsibility). The difference is small but significant. Cause marketing is a marketing relationship where there is an expected brand benefit, where CSR plays in the realm of philanthropy. In cause marketing, it’s corporate first, cause second.

One of the big debates against these programs is that, “If these companies are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, they shouldn’t make people work for it”. This is a classic example of confusing CSR with CM. I couldn’t disagree more. Cause marketing is not a replacement for existing CSR programs. These programs aren’t just a re-allocation of philanthropy dollars, they result of net new new dollars being contributed to causes from a marketing budget. There needs to be positive brand return, or the program will disappear. So if a little charity work means a lot of new dollars being made available for causes, I’m all for it.

So why does CSR vs. CM matter?

Beyond executing against a program’s rules, cause marketing initiatives have no real responsibility to go any further than giving away a stated prize. Community idea competitions usually result in hundreds or even thousands of new ideas being submitted. Some of those ideas are unnecessary or impossible to implement, but many others represent a bottom up voice for what’s needed in the community.Whether intentional or not, these platforms have given a voice to ignored communities, marginalized populations, and scrappy causes. They have the ability to bring attention to there needs in ways that used to be reserved for behemoth not for profit organizations.

But as with any competition, there are winners and losers. Cause marketing idea competitions make plenty of ideas come to fruition. As a marketing competition, it can’t be reasonably expected that the marketer take responsibility to manage and push forward every idea submitted. In the case of the Aviva Community Fund, we partnered with Benevity in 2010 so that registered charities can use the platform to connect donations as a way to migrate from CM to CSR platform and to let the ideas live on. But we can’t expect that a soft drink or credit card company follow up on every idea – it’s not good business.

The result is that many important ideas get forgotten once the next round of voting starts.

Government and community idea competitions
Idea platforms showcase community needs. So nothing could be worse than a community need being flagged in a competition, then going unfulfilled or un-evaluated. The crowdsourcing competition model uses voting as a way of making idea evaluation manageable, but just because an idea isn’t popular or because the idea creator doesn’t know how to use facebook doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good idea.

In a previous blog post about classifying crowdsourcing platforms, I introduced a concept called Crowdsourcing Researching -using crowdsourcing as a tool to articulate previously unknown or unmet needs. These ideas platforms are an amazing Crowdsourcing Researching tool to understand community needs. FixMyStreet is a great example of how this can work in government, and with many municipalities moving towards philosophies of open government, listing to the crowd has to be a vertical of activity.

My hope (dream, aspiration) is that in the long term, these competitions find ways to formalize their relationships with government as a way to ensure that all ideas receive the attention they deserve. For the winning ideas, they get a fast-track to implementation under the Cause Marketing program rules. But for all other ideas, they find a formalized way to be reviewed by government agencies to ensure there’s an opportunity for implementation. Idealized, yes I know, but important.

What are your thoughts?

Having spent the better part of the last two years working on the  Aviva Community Fund and MIT Global Challenge platforms, and working on ways to see ideas live beyond the length of a competition, I can tell you that this new form of bottom up innovation represents an important evolution in how problems are solved in the world. And as long as they continue to be brand building powerhouses, private organizations are going to continue to collect important community ideas. What do you think should happen to private competition ideas?

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