French business strategist Guillaume Martin has won $2 500 (R24 515) in First National Bank's (FNB) IdeaBounty competition, which has been running for the past six weeks. The competition leveraged the power of crowd-sourcing to generate ideas for advertising campaigns to increase the number of high-end users for FNB's online banking service.
FNB used crowd-sourcing, which is defined as outsourcing a task to a number of unknown people in the form of an open call. The aim was to generate ideas for an advertising campaign and, in conjunction with Internet marketer, Quirk, FNB offered an award for the winning idea. The competition was marketed on Facebook, Twitter and in 437 unique blogposts, says FNB.
Martin came out on top of 800 other entries that were judged on the practicality of their ideas, how effective the ideas communicated the message and the novelty of the idea. FNB premier banking Internet and social media manager Andy Hadfield says this is the first time crowd-sourcing has been used to generate ideas for a corporation as large as FNB.
The new buzz word?
“I believe that crowd-sourcing will be the new buzz word in e-marketing in 2009,” says Hadfield.
He is adamant the ROI of the competition will justify the release of the winning ad campaign in February next year. Hadfield explains how, traditionally, FNB would have had to pay a number of consultants by the hour to come up with such a campaign, yet, with crowd-sourcing, the cost is reduced to paying for one winning idea.
“Among other benefits, crowd-sourcing allowed us to engage with people who are creatively engaged with our brand and create a new avenue through which we can procure ideas,” says Hadfield.
He adds that the competition had a far reaching international pull and, out of the 800 registered entrants, more than 40% of them were from outside of SA.
BMI-TechKnowledge research analyst Ryan Smit says this competition would be popular with the PC literate community as it includes them in the design process. “Computer enthusiasts are also likely to contribute because many of them are already comfortable with Web communities and Web initiatives.”
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