Big Brands Increase Investment In Crowdsourcing By Nearly 50% In 2014

Paris, 9^th December 2014: eYeka, the global market leader in creative crowdsourcing for marketers, has today revealed that the world’s biggest brands are increasingly using crowdsourcing to source ideas and content for their campaigns and product development, indicating the practice is becoming more mainstream.

eYeka’s report on ‘The state of crowdsourcing in 2015’ due out early next year examines how creative crowdsourcing has evolved, and how brands and companies are using it more and more to inspire marketing initiatives and product innovation.

The report will look at the projects run by ten major FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) giants on the four largest crowdsourcing platforms, and is set to reveal that FMCG brands increased investment by 46 percent in 2014 compared to 2013. Key findings include:

• The top three advertisers investing most in crowdsourcing in 2014 were Procter & Gamble, followed by Unilever, and Nestlé
• PepsiCo increased its use of crowdsourcing by 325 percent in 2014, while Reckitt-Benckiser (whose brands include Dettol, Nurofen and Clearasil among others) increased its use by 200 percent

Commenting on the findings, François Pétavy, CEO of eYeka said, “Major FMCG advertisers are investing more and more in crowdsourcing as they try to stand out from the competition. Over the last few years advertising has been playing it too safe and as a result, some brands are now indistinguishable from one another, relying on the same old predictable formula. In the last year, we’ve seen FMCG companies trying to break this mould by tapping into the creativity of the crowd.”

‘The State of Crowdsourcing in 2015’  will also analyse crowdsourcing projects by the world’s top 100 global brands (as defined by the Interbrand Best Global Brands ranking) over the last two years. These figures show that although crowdsourcing was dominated by technology brands in 2013, brands across all sectors are now realising its potential and investing. In 2014, Ford was the brand that launched the most crowdsourcing projects (11) while in 2013 it was Samsung with nine. The top three sectors investing in crowdsourcing in 2014 were:

1. Automotive
2. Alcohol
3. Grocery (excluding alcohol)

“No one is individually smarter than everyone is collectively. Crowdsourcing has become part of standard marketing processes for major brands as they have seen the results of their early initiatives paying off. Marketers are increasingly bypassing major agency groups to work directly with creative talents, start-ups and more innovative solutions providers to get fresher perspectives on a brief and the ability to execute it faster and more cost-effectively,” concluded Pétavy.

eYeka’s customers include major brands such as P&G, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Unilever, as well as a variety of agencies that use the crowdsourcing platform to supplement and enhance their internal resources. eYeka success stories include reinventing instant coffee for Nescafé, the connected toothbrush for P&G brand Oral-B, and Hyundai’s global brand campaign ‘live brilliant’.

eYeka will release the full ‘The state of crowdsourcing in 2015’ report in early 2015.