Crowdsourcing Won’t Work For Nokia & Starbucks

News that Starbucks and Nokia will be engaging in a spot of crowdsourcing leaves me scratching my head and thinking about the 50/50 Corporation theory again. Why do companies that have been very successful in the past with market changing determination now want to listen to the market for new success?

I’m not saying crowdsouring isn’t a good idea. I just think it’s unlikely to work for 100% profit companies. Starbucks and Nokia aren’t social companies – and that’s ok, you know what you get when you’re buying from them – but because they’re 100% profit companies that means that they are going to find it hard to engage at a social level.

Crowdsourcing for a company like Netflix should work better because it’s more like a 50/50 corporation – it’s a challenger brand (or was) which was more of less built virally and the social tools that the site uses engages the audience in a useful way. People care enough for Netflix because they feel socially empowered by the brand.

Nokia and Starbucks need innovation but crowdsourcing is probably the wrong methodology. Of course, people are going to engage Nokia and Starbucks in these crowdsourcing projects but these are going to be the wrong people to listen to – the Nokia fans, the gadget freaks, the coffee snobs. I’d argue that the people who they should be having a dialog with simply don’t care about those brands. There’s no social connection with the brands to ever get involved.

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