Crowd Sourcing: a Unique Way to Promote an Event.

photo by cooltownstudios.com

Who do you turn to when you have to promote an event? As many event planners know, there are many steps to planning and executing an event. First the event itself has to be exciting enough that it will generate interest. Then the organizer has to make sure that the event is well attended. That”s where promoting an event comes in.

Using Crowd Sourcing to Promote an Event.

Many of you have probably heard the term crowd sourcing before. If you haven’t, crowd sourcing is a term used for the practice of obtaining ideas or services by soliciting contributions from a large group of people. The idea is that you would turn to a community (usually online) for ideas rather than from traditional sources such as employees or suppliers.

Crowd Sourcing Can Be Quite Effective. It Can Also Be Very Risky.

Crowd sourcing is effective when it catches on and turns promoting your event into a viral campaign. It can also be risky in that if there is little interest from the crowd that you have approached.

Recently the Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC) undertook a unique way to promoting an event. Well, I guess we could call it an event. Their job was to promote Canada. Rather than use the traditional means such as hiring an ad agency, developing a series of high-level commercials and buying media time, the CTC decided to turn to the crowd that they were in fact promoting; Canadians.

Via crowd sourcing, the CTC asked Canadians to describe, in their own words/video, what they liked about their country. They received over 65 hours of content.

The video below is a compilation of the crowd sourcing videos that were submitted. Talk about a unique way to approach crowd sourcing for promoting an event.