Exhibit 18.6 Wikipedia sources most of its content from a vast number of contributors.
Conceptually similar to co-creation, crowdsourcing (‘sourcing from crowd’) is the process of
soliciting ideas, content, services or funding from a crowd, usually an online community.
Wikipedia (Exhibit 18.6), which sources most of its content from a vast number of contributors, exemplifies
crowdsourcing.
Exhibit 18.7 ‘How do you like your Vegemite?’ crowdsourcing campaign in 2008
yielded over 300,000 submissions, revealing many new combinations and uses of Vegemite.
Another notable example of crowdsourcing is the 2008 ‘How do you like your Vegemite?’
campaign (Exhibit 18.7). Kraft, the company that used to own the brand, conducted this very successful
campaign which revived interest in the brand, raised brand affinity, re-invigorated sales and yielded over
300,000 submissions, including a number of new combinations and uses of Vegemite.
Kraft was already aware that consumers were mixing Vegemite with other foods. The
campaign yielded new insights on how the brand was consumed, on what foods were being combined and
how consumers consumed Vegemite.
This led to the creation of a new blended variant — mixing Philadelphia Cream Cheese
with Vegemite to create a smoother, milder, easier to spread, “dipable” variant that was better suited
for snacking. The new product became an instant success — within two months of launch, 2 million jars
were sold, and the variant achieved 12% household penetration.
Exhibit 18.8 LEGO IDEAS
invites participants to create a Lego project
Yet another noteworthy example is LEGO IDEAS,
Exibit 18.8. On this website, LEGO invites participants to create a Lego project, share it on the IDEAS website, and
seek supporters. Projects that secure 10,000 supporters are reviewed by LEGO for a chance to become official
LEGO products.
