Can crowds create brands as well as the pros?
// June 24th, 2008 // Advertising, Writing
For a few moments, I loved the idea of using crowdsourcing to brainstorm new brand names, business names and taglines on namethis.com.
The website for the business behind this, kluster.com, is the coolest I’ve seen in months, and everything from the front page to the jobs page has more sharply-defined character than a Raymond Chandler novel.
But can great brands be unearthed by the unwashed masses, or must they always be the domain of marketing genii? I have a half-day brand brainstorm workshop scheduled for a new client tomorrow morning, so this question couldn’t arise at a more pertinent time for me. Especially since I’ve been managing writer’s block by reading about namethis.com on Australian Anthill.
To an extent, any new brand does require a lot of new ideas thrown up on a whiteboard. Every brand brainstorm should include a free flow of ideas, guided by a moderator who is quick and experienced enough to encourage the workshop participants to follow some trains of thought into wilder flights of fancy in the hope of unearthing a golden nugget or two.
The moderator’s role is crucial. A good moderator is always on the lookout for groupthink, fatigue, cynicism sarcasm and other common symptoms of asking inexperienced communicators to do something as new and threatening as invent a new brand.
Namethis.com lets you write a brief, then just collects a single date/time-ordered list of user submissions, which appears to be the online equivalent of a brainstorming session without a moderator. Browsing through some of the active projects there I can see clear evidence of each of the symptoms of an unhealthy brainstorm, especially groupthink.
Another problem is that branding brainstorms can be much more effective if everyone in the workshop starts from the same point and heads in the same direction. A detailed brief helps, and none of the examples I found on namethis.com had what I’d call a good brief – they seemed to reflect the same level of emotional investment as the $99 dollar investment it takes to submit a request for brand names.
It can often help to work together on defining some of the elements of the brand – dimensions of personality, colours, sounds and practice with a few “if this product were a <product category> it would be a <brand name>” questions to make sure everyone is starting from the same point. There is no opportunity to do that on namethis.com
Finally, I do think that some products – like yet another bogus weight-loss pill – are open to guerilla criticism on a site like this. I’ll be interested to see whether and how the site moderator or the pill merchant take action on my suggested product name, “Eating A Healthy Balanced Diet and Exercise Didn’t Work For Me“.
In the end, namethis.com probably represents appropriate value for $99.00 – your chances of turning up a gold nugget brand are about as likely as spending that $99.00 on 15 minutes of a good professional creative’s time. But you may have to spend a little more than that to get the result you need, either way.
