Digital CPG Blog

“Let’s face it – when large companies enter the digital space, they are not always met with the warmest reception. (Translation: they tend to blunder in, mess it up, and get torn a new one.)”

Such honesty isn’t from the latest in the blogosphere, but GE itself who is crowdsourcing their next digital / social media ad blitz. To succeed, GE isn’t turning to the typical expert, but instead the everyday consumer. Tech Crunch’s Robin Wauters reports:

In the spirit of disruption, GE is bypassing the traditional agency model for marketing campaigns. The company has set up both a basic Google Moderator tool and a dedicated email inbox (ad.ideas@ge.com) in order to solicit ideas from anyone (including industry pros).

Got a great idea for an ad campaign? A creative concept for a killer contest? A truly innovative social media program? With your help, we can avoid the lame and embrace the awesome.

The idea is for people like you, our readers, to submit what you think are the best ideas on how to engage online audiences, being the monster company GE is.

Crowdsourcing advertising is certainly the hottest new trend and while it remains to be seen if such campaigns are really that more effective than traditional campaigns, simply stating that they care about what their customers think will likely prop GE up and above other companies. Not to mention that by engaging consumers in not only creating the content, but voting and deciding on the campaign, they will likely increase consumer loyalty, particularly around influencers.

It’s tough for large companies to admit that they don’t know it all, but it’s impressive that while that may be the case, they also trust you as their customer to be great.