on crowdsourcing.

I've been hearing lately that crowdsourcing is a bad word.

I think the core issue is simpler. If you are asking others to do your work for you, and considering that the magic of collaboration, you are missing the point. A contest that asks the public to create your ads isn't inherently about the audience. It's gluing a high-school essay contest to the emergence of democratized production. This isn't inherently impressive. It's a contest, and this is an old idea.

Gluing it to a multi-million dollar SuperBowl media buy only makes it a worse idea.

If you ask people to work together to create something of value to not only themselves, but to a wider community, the crowd is creating real value. If you want to attach your brand to this, without corrupting it, expect a positive reaction.

Crowdsourcing based entirely on creating value for yourself, your brand, or your client, isn't crowdsourcing. It will either die due to lack of interest, or run entirely on incentive via cash. Paying directly for attention and interaction can be done better and smarter than this.

If you want to get a crowd of people working together on something, it needs to be about that crowd of people. Frankly, everything you do should be about that crowd of people - they decide what your brand means, and exactly how much it's worth.