Lee Van

Lee Van

Crowdsourcing. Thoughts. Beer. And David Lee Roth

This is probably the one trillionth and one post on the topic of crowdsourcing.

Where did this term originate? Well, by my 2 seconds of research it has been accredited to Jeff Howe in a Wired article, some 4 years ago.

What does it mean? According to the usually fallible Wikipedia, it "is a neologistic compound of Crowd and Outsourcing for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing them to a group of people or community, through an "open call" to a large group of people (a crowd) asking for contributions." In effect, what we call in advertising a gang bang.

Is this a good thing? Time will tell if anything good comes from it, but feel free to point me to something that has been done in this manner that has been earth shattering, responsible and can compete with great work that has been done when the responsibility was left to only a few people. To date, I can't.

So, I got to thinking, have I ever crowdsourced anything?

In the past year, I can count two attempts. Super Bowl Glory (crowdsourcing a Super Bowl spot with 8 advertisers that after being green lighted by NBC, got the red light when a few of their advertisers got pissed off) and BuyABeerCompany.com (it started out as a joke, it really did).

Anything else? Maybe.

The year is 2000. Pre-iTunes/ iPod. Common internet speed? 56kbps.

One of our clients was a guy named David Lee Roth, at the time, former lead singer of Van Halen. The days of his voice framing a summer for the masses were about a decade or so in the past. His last album released, through lots of online promotion we did, sold about 200K albums. That would be 1998. The guitarist (John 5) on that album, who left to play for Marilyn Manson, wrote a song and took existing Diamond Dave audio from years past and created what we now call a mashup.

It was presented to me with a "What do you think?" And... "Can we do anything with it?"

This "song" was called "Look At All The People Here Tonite!" Without a record label, the best case scenario was just putting this up on Roth's website and be done with it. A "gift" to his fans. That would have gotten a couple of looks, but how to get some traction and maybe a look see by a new record label?

To get played on radio, you pay people to push your song onto the playlists, commonly known as Indies. Costs tons of money. And with deregulation of radio station ownership, you no longer fought in cities, but now had to go to the likes of Clear Channel and deal with their guy and he was programming for dozens of stations across the land. Plus, you would have to go out-of-pocket for promotions (Win a Ride on former Van Halen lead singer David Lee Roth's Jack Ass!!), etc.

DOA? Usually the artist would involve, to a small degree, the fan base. "Call your radio station and have them play our song," etc. That requires sending out tons of professionally created CD's with cool artwork to over 300 stations. But what if you don't send it and still have the fans call? Hmm.

We created what looked like an album cover, got that out to the fan base of what was coming. Let that circulate and then, a few weeks later, had them contact their local stations to get the song played.

The fans never heard the song. And the radio stations didn't have the song.

The fans, yes the fans, directed the radio stations to contact the website to receive a special login and download, burn it themselves and play it. Sounds crazy?

With the fan's desire to hear it, regardless of being good or bad, we turned them into Indies.

This became the first ever single released to radio via the internet and through the power of crowsdourcing, it charted for a few weeks, as high as #35 on rock radio. The end benefit? Roth's catalog saw a spike in sales and talks opened up with promoters for a nationwide tour, etc.

To me, engaging the crowd, can be a very powerful tool when the crowd benefits, in some degree, as a whole.

Most of what I see, concerns me where the benefit is for a few, diminishing many individuals in the "crowd" to little more than human stepping stones, receiving a paltry "reward" (if any) for their talents.

About the Author

Michael Migliozzi is the managing partner of the Hollywood, CA based Forza Migliozzi. Forza Migliozzi is an advertising and brand content agency. http://www.forzamigliozzi.com

Jim Dandy of Black Oak Arkansas vs. David Lee Roth of Van Halen. Who do you like better?

If you say David Lee Roth, do you at least think David Lee Roth stole Jim Dandy's look and act?

Yes, but David has a better voice and was in a better band.

For a few dollars more - Smoker