What's Floating Around This Week? 2 April 2013

Welcome to another short week!

We hope everyone had an enjoyable Easter, it was certainly a little manic for us as entries closed for the Midlands Media Awards in the run up to the break so the office started to resemble a newsagents!

We've had some great entries though from a really diverse range of entrants and it has been interesting to see the categories which have had the most support - including the new Blogger of the Year category and the one which is in the hand of the masses, the Public Choice category. 

From newspapers, to radio stations, to blogs, this category has attracted some really diverse entries, giving our initial judges a fairly tough task and an interesting read!

Each of the entrants has been asking their listeners or readers to vote using Twitter and Facebook and some of the posts have been highly entertaining, and this got us thinking a little about how the public can really affect the outcome of so many things and increasing trend for Crowdsourcing.

When it comes to creativity, tapping of creative talent pools to design and develop original art, media or content, crowdsourcing is used to tap into online communities of thousands of creatives to develop original products and concepts, including photography, advertising, film, video production, graphic design, apparel, consumer goods, and branding concepts.

Heineken recently using crowdsourcing to generate entries, and they are no doubt starting to prepare for the final phase of this year's annual Your Future Bottle Design Challenge. A team of brand people and design experts are planning to select a single winning bottle design at Milan Design Week next month as Heineken uses the second consecutive year of the crowdsourcing initiative to mark the company's 140th year in the beer business.

SuperBrugsen, a Danish cooperative grocery store chain, is running a campaign to crowdsource the items on its shelves.The supermarket is asking its customers to suggest locally made products that it should carry by filling out an online form or speaking with managers in-store. The form asks users to explain why they want to see the product on the shelves, as well as information about the company selling it. SuperBrugsen staff will taste-test products to ensure they are delectable enough to feature in the stores. The chain hopes to add 500 new local products to its 230 stores, and if successful, the initiative can reduce the chain’s carbon footprint by reducing shipping time. It can also help to foster stronger local economies by offering farmers and food artisans an outlet for their products.

Though we haven’t seen supermarkets engage in too many crowdsourcing campaigns, the two seem to be a good fit. Crowdsourcing is all about creating a stronger connection with consumers and gauging market demand – something any grocery store can use more of.

Past crowdsourcing initiatives by supermarkets include Walmart’s ‘Get on the Shelf’ campaign, which resulted in three new products being introduced to its roster and it seems that Walmart now have the crowdsourcing bug. They are considering a radical plan to allow customers to deliver packages to online buyers in a shakeup of delivery services that could allow the supermarkets group it to better compete with Amazon.

Many start-ups help people make money by renting out a spare room, a car, or even a cocktail dress, and Walmart would in effect be inviting people to rent out space in their vehicle and deliver packages to others. Such an effort would face legal, regulatory and privacy obstacles, but Walmart executives said the scheme was at an early planning stage. The supermarket chain is making a big push to ship online orders directly from stores, hoping to cut transportation costs and gain an edge over Amazon and other online retailers, which have no physical store locations. Walmart offers this service at 25 stores, but plans to expand to 50 this year and could eventually bolster the scheme to hundreds of stores.

Walmart uses delivery firms such as FedEx – or, in the case of a same-day delivery service called Walmart To Go that is being tested in five areas, using its own delivery trucks. The retailer, which also owns Asda, has millions of customers visiting its stores each week. Some of these shoppers could tell the retailer where they live and sign up to drop off packages for online customers who live on their route home. The grocer would offer a discount on the customers' shopping bill, in effect covering the cost of their fuel in return for the delivery of package. 

"This is at the brainstorming stage, but it's possible in a year or two," said Jeff McAllister, senior vice president of Walmart US innovations, so lets watch this space! 

Walmart is not the only supermarket to use crowdsourcing, as you have only to look at our very own Waitrose. Back in 2011, Waitrose asked customers to send in ideas for new products and the winner was a dessert named “Seriously Chocolaty Rose-Infused Chocolate Ganache,” which does, indeed, sound delicious.

Its not just retail that's using the power of crowdsourcing, its also increasingly being used online and for entertainment. Fans of Joseph Gordon-Levitt will be happy to hear that they’ll be seeing a lot more of the actor-director starting in August. Recently, Gordon-Levitt announced that his crowdsourced production company hitRECord is getting its own variety show on the Pivot network in the States.HitRECord is a for-profit online collaborative production company that Gordon-Levitt started with his brother back in 2005. 

The project first started as a place for the brothers to get feedback on videos, but quickly evolved into a site for creatives – writers, photographers, actors, musicians, singers, and others – to collaborate on larger projects. HitRECord’s collaborative model is compelling and fairly straightforward. Artists can upload their work to the website for others to review and offer feedback, or remix. All the content has to be original work, or within the public domain. 

Artists can collaborate and alter each other’s submissions, including citations of all the

works they used. In 2010, the Gordon-Levitt brothers introduced a way to monetise the crowd contributions. HitRECord gives back 50 percent of the profits it earns on any user-submitted content back to the creatives. Thus far, the production company has sold records and books, screened films at festivals, and put on live shows. A TV show should give the creatives on the site even more exposure. The variety show, which will air weekly, will feature short films, speakers, animations, songs, and more, Gordon-Levitt promises. Each week’s episode will be focused on a different theme, and the actor will host the show himself. This innovative idea is bound to reach our shores before long so stay tuned! 

Well, that's it for this week. Enjoy.