Step out onto a street corner. Hold up a sign with a work assignment. Passersby offer solutions. You pick one and use it. Do that on the web and you’re crowdsourcing. Anyone can play. You pick the winner.

Crowdsourcing recently brought a 16-year gig to an end for Lowe, a major UK ad agency. Their client, Uniliver, decided to cast their fate with the crowd. They’re soliciting the public for a creative way of promoting Peperami in exchange for a $10,000 prize.

You may already be participating in crowdsourcing. If you’ve purchased a stock photo online, bought tickets from Hotwire, or shopped on ebay, you’re in the crowd; searching a site for goods provided by an unseen crowd of providers.

If anyone’s defined Crowdsourcing, it’s Wired Magazine’s contributing editor, Jeff Howe, author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business:

“Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.”

Google is now using crowdsourced surface street traffic data. By turning on the crowdsourcing function of GoogleMaps on your smart phone, you become part of the traffic data crowdsource. Google admits it will take widespread participation before the data becomes reliable.

Howe believes Crowdsourcing is driving the future of business. But, it has limits. For instance, The Washington Post reports how recent efforts to crowdsource a restaurant served up mixed results; evidence some things are not meant for the crowd.

Ready to call on the crowd?

Before leaping to crowdsource an assignment, be warned: getting what you want requires the ability to explain the assignment in the providers native language. Do you speak Artist? Designer? Writer? Results vary based on this one factor: if they can’t see what you want, chances are you won’t get it.

Crowdsourcing works best when you can so clearly define your objective the crowd not only understands, but self-selects down to the competent few capable of delivering. If you’re vague, you’ll wind up wasting time wading through unusable submissions.

The two leading sources for design crowdsourcing are crowdspring and 99Designs. I’ve used 99Designs and found the work far exceeded my expectations. However, it taught me the time-saving importance of defining the assignment clearly. While I’ve not used them, Crowdspring was the first into is another resource in the space with a well-earned reputation. Testimony to the effectiveness of crowdsourcing: Jason at 99Designs tells me crowdspring crowdsourced their logo via 99Designs.

Crowdsourcing will demand a higher level of your involvement than calling in a trusted single vendor or staff person. Effectively using this approach has a learning curve to it–more time invested. Over time, though, effective use of crowdsourcing will net you a fresher perspective than possible with traditional talent pools.

Crowdsourcing won’t win you any designer friends. Some see perils in the process. When Forbes published their profile on crowdspring, it triggered over 100 responses, most of which I wouldn’t repeat in mixed company. Here’s a relatively tame example:

“If 100 designers enter work, 99% get screwed out of their time. From the clients perspective, he can hire staff of 100 designers for 2 bucks an hour. It should be illegal.“

The point is well-taken. Regardless of what you’re crowdsourcing, do so with integrity:

• Make a precise request.
• Offer a fair reward.
• Narrow to a few finalists.
• Be reasonable with revisions.

Understand that while it’s finished product to you, but it’s time and treasure to them.

Crowdsourcing may not drive the future of business entirely, but it provides an alternate route to fresh solutions for selected applications in businesses of every size.

Running errands Saturday morning, I saw this scene unfolding in a bank parking lot. Morbid curiosity got the best of me and we pulled in to get a closer look.

Customer Appreciation Day

There was no signage explaining what was going on (or inviting people to participate). So, I had to get out of the car and ask the lone employee manning the folding table what was going on.

“It’s customer appreciation day, would you please sign in?” he told me with well scripted enthusiasm. Sign in? To be appreciated?

I don’t think so. There was one kid jumping incessantly, a guy waiting to do chair massages, and a pop-up tent way on the other side of the parking lot with cold drinks, popcorn and lots of brochures about bank services–more chances to be appreciated, no doubt.

Appreciating customers is wise business practice. Doing it in a hot parking lot, disconnected from your branding message is beyond lame. It is, as my kids say, FAIL.

Appreciation is a practice, not an event

Customer appreciation isn’t something you do, it’s the way you are. How quickly do you respond? Do you get it right the first time? Are customer expectations exceeded, or merely satisfied?

This is a pass-fail test and your customer grades your work. Having to tell customers you appreciate them probably means you don’t understand what appreciation looks like to them. Tune into the customer’s felt need. Go beyond satisfaction regularly. Being thankful is so much better than just saying it.

A moonwalk in a bank parking lot doesn’t enrich my experience of the bank; there’s no benefit. They might as well have rented an inflatable pink gorilla instead and put it on the roof with a sign reading, “we want you to think we appreciate you.”

Everyday is customer appreciation day. Lose a few and you’ll find them even easier to appreciate.

By the way: I blotted out the bank’s name and faces of those involved in the promotion. I’m sure they’ll appreciate that.

One side is right, one isn’t. Only, you’re not quite sure which is which. West Side Story was compelling because we could see both sides’ prejudices. The jets. The sharks. Both wrong. Both right. Just neither at the same time.

There’s a three-way burger rumble shaping up between McDonald’s, Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. Just like West Side Story, there are generous servings of right and wrong to go around. The turf: Angus. Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s say McDonald’s crossed the line. McDonald’s, claims they’re just following their value proposition into Angus burgers.

Fight on your opponent’s terms and it’s an even bet you’ll lose. McDonald’s is doing what they do and they’re doing it big. Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, meanwhile, are being who they are–clever and snarky. All three are stepping out–though, only one of them has the guns to pull it off.

Since McDonald’s rolled out their Angus burgers, sales at the Golden Arches are up 2.6% in July, according to The Wall Street Journal. Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, both owned by CKE, report sales are off 3.65% in the four weeks ending August 10th. Up is good. Down is bad. But, is this sales differential a matter of Angus?

McDonald’s Big Angus burger is $3.99. You’ll pay $3.49-3.99 at Hardee’s and Carl’s for their 1/3 pound of Angus. CKE sees, in this moment of price parity, a chance to take a bite out of McDonald’s value provider perception. There’s a problem: McDonald’s owns “value” in the minds of customers like hot owns ouch. At first glance, it seems like CKE is coming to this gun fight with a butter knife.

Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. aren’t content to just fight it out for Angus. They’re taking direct aim at McDonald’s signature product, offering a cash rebate: Try a Big Mac. If you like it better than the new “Big Carl,” CKE will pay you. Compare the Big Mac? Good luck with that. Better still, ask Pepsi about taste challenges.

Ronald’s packing the heat of emotional connection; we all have car loads of family memories under his Golden Arches. Challenging a competitor’s long-held perceptual ground by inviting your customers sample them is more foolish than gutsy. Chances are, you’ll only further entrench the competitor’s position and weaken your own. Worse still, it’s nya-nya thumb-sucking; unless you send the other guy home in a bag, you’ll sound petty and small.

Ronald continues standing tall. McDonald’s banner billows atop value mountain. CKE, meanwhile, is equally secure atop big burger mountain–it’s really more of a hill. So, what’s CKE doing? Coming off their hill to wage an up-hill attack on McD’s mountain.

CKE probably isn’t fighting to win, but instead Marketing Outrageously to “draft” McDonald’s; gaining sales as a result of marketing lift from their bodacious attack. More likely, the draft benefit will ultimately go to McDonald’s by virtue of girth. As a result, what CKE is really tagging is niche turf.

West Side Story’s turf battle ends with one hero laying dead on the playground, others standing in humbled silence. Both sides loose. This Angus rumble won’t wind up in a mortal climax, but it will leave two of the three players bloodied for no lasting gain. I’m betting Ronald won’t be one of them. He’s got a rocket in his pocket.

“I don’t get it, can you help me Dad?,” my daughter said. How humbling is it to be stumped by fourth-grade math homework? Reduce fractions to the lowest-common denominator.

Recollections of mom’s protests against my being left back due to this very fourth-grade deficiency freight-trained into my mind’s eye as I surveyed the assignment. I don’t know if my little girl saw beads of sweat forming in the underbrush of my mustache, but I felt it.

While editing copy the next day, part of me was still swaying aboard the remembrance express: reduce till it can’t be reduced any further. Why didn’t I ever learn that? Actually, I did. Because, as with fractions, so it is with good copy: Reduce to short sentences. Reduce to simple verbs. Direct action, direct result.

Just like this:

Here’s the fraction-reducing rule for crisp copy: say something well. Say nothing else. Say it plainly, then shut up. After all, Gilding the lily betrays a lack of confidence in your message.

The reason, I never learned how to reduce fractions, by the way, is because the teacher never convinced me why I needed to know; 40 years later my Stella did.