Why Modern Marketing Loves Open Source

For Modern Marketeers the Open Source Movement provides some great lessons in the power of online communities.

It may all sound like a geeky cult but open source is actually a way of working that involves huge, web-based collaborations among far-flung individuals and a shared, or open, approach to intellectual property rights.  Instead of maintaining a tight grip on any findings resulting from a project, open sourcers share new knowledge in a central bank of information (often programming code) that anyone else can access and use for free, albeit within a set of usage criteria.

Another unusual characteristic is the way in which people are motivated by open source projects.  'Open-sourcers' often volunteer their time as they perceive benefits beyond straight financial gain, such as working in an online group to overcome a social issue.  In this way open source projects are like super-powered, grassroots volunteer networks.  And that gives them a real buzz.

However, don't let the fuzzy, warm side of open source leave you thinking it's just a new kind of wired charity movement.  Open source projects might not be overtly profit-driven but they can have massive commercial impact. 

Mozilla is the producer and distributor of Firefox, a new open-source web browser.  The organisation's primary mission is create a better experience for web users, not shareholder return.  So Firefox is free to download and use.  But in fulfilling this mission Mozilla plan to take the biggest slice of the web browser market possible.  And as the web browser market is dominated by Microsoft's Internet Explorer, it puts the little software company straight into a fight with the world's biggest.  But it's not lacking nerve.  Firefox was written by an open source community of very smart programmers.  And they have recently, raised $250k from their own customers to fund an advertising camapign.  Small beer for Gates but indicative of some serious David and Goliath style inspiration.

You might think that Mozilla has no chance and that Bill Gates would ignore it or swat it away.  However, the world's richest man has reason to be concerned.  He is already competing with an open source community in the shape of Linux, an open source operating system that he has identified as a real threat to his Windows product.  Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer has far as gone as saying, "I'd put the Linux phenomenon really as threat number one".  So open source is already a playing on the largest of stages.  (In fact, it is estimated that Linux would have cost $1 billion dollars to produce in a private company, as a proprietary project a resource that even gates would find hard to reproduce.)

But what does this techy stuff have anything to do with advertising and marketing you may ask?  Well, open source has grown up in the technical sector so it's not surprising that it has, to date, been used to produce software.  But that's slowly changing and the organisational model behind open source (massive web base collaborations by individuals outside of private organisations) is starting to starting to drive innovation in other areas.

Possibly the most famous non-technical example to date is from the world of  politics, when Democratic presidential candidate, Howard Dean, used the open source ethic in his 'Blog For America' campaign. Although Dean was unsuccessful, his fundraising was record breaking and all the more notable as donations came from individuals, not big business.   Speaking at the time his campaign manager, Joe Trippi said,

"We wanted to use the collaborative nature of open source, where more people filling holes makes it more stable and effective. We wondered how it would work in a political campaign."

And now the world of branding and communications is waking up to the opportunities of open source techniques. When Budweiser launched the hugely popular Whassup! campaign consumers started making their own versions and competing to see who could be most innovative and entertaining.  Groups of Rabbis, English gentlemen, superheroes and South Park characters started Whassuping! appearing all over the web. They may not have realised it at the time but they were  effectively collaborating in an open-source style.

Last year, General Electric ran an online advertising campaign called 'Pen' which allowed people to create a drawing online and send it to a friend.  Effectively,  the campaign direction and content was handed over to an online community, once again a very open source concept. This incredibly simple idea was a multi-award winner and resulted in users from 140 countries e-mailing 6 million sketches to 1.5 million recipients.  This year the company is taking the campaign one step further and allowing people to collaborate on sketches in groups of 3.

In 2004, Mercedes asked people to send in pictures of themselves with their beloved Mercs.  The company received a huge number of highly prized photographs which became the centrepiece of a traditional campaign. Again consumers were asked to create an open source style community and provide the campaign with its content and direction.

So by borrowing some open source techniques (ie inviting huge online  communities into the branding and marketing process for a product) marketeers can create huge amounts of energy, passion and loyalty: all highly desirable in a world where traditional advertising is struggling to reach more powerful, savvy consumers.

However, for marketeers used to a traditional approach the open source path can seem anarchic and disruptive. This is partly because the mindset is so different from 'command and control' branding campaigns, run to brand guidelines, by brand guardians.

Key to the Whassup! campaign was that Anheuser-Busch stood by as people trashed their lovingly crafted advertisements.  The giant brewer knew that their customers were creating massive amounts of valuable content and that their passion and enthusiasm would take the campaign to a new level.

Howard Dean's Director of Internet, Zephyr Teachout said,

"It's not marketing and branding in the sense of demanding complete fidelity to a very succinct message, saying you can't waver on font, colour or verb. We've allowed for local-interest, geographic ownership of the campaign. That necessarily runs counter to [brand marketing]. We have a flowering of different brands. If this was a branding contest, we'd be losing."

It is also important not to focus too greatly on technology. Zephyr Teachout has no interest in technology for technology's sake. "We want the simplest, dumbest tools we can get," she says.

"The idea is to get people working, not to dazzle them, and to get their feedback on what could be done better as quickly as possible".

Getting your own customers (or somone else's) to determine the direction of your brand, with limited central control, may seem like a crazy idea. However, Howard Dean, Anheuser-Busch, GE and Mercedes are working on the theory that their supporters and customers are bright, intelligent people who can help them build campaigns, brands and businesses. And in doing so create huge amounts of loyalty.

Now does that sound so crazy ?

Comments

[Stephen Newton]

There’s a difference between marketing and sales. Marketing seeks to understand consumers’ needs, wants and desires and to design product to match those needs, wants and desires. Sales starts with the product, then seeks out those who need, want and desire it.

I think you mean sales when you say marketing (a common mistake) and that your open source sales concept is simply marketing under another name.

Marketers have always enabled consumers to direct their brands. If you don’t do that, you’re not a marketer at all, but a salesman.

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks for your comments Stephen. I don't understand this:

I think you mean sales when you say marketing (a common mistake) and that your open source sales concept is simply marketing under another name.

Could you elaborate ?

[Stephen Newton]

Sure. At the risk of teaching granny to suck eggs, I’ll explain the difference between marketing and sales with the evolutionary model.

First generation business is production orientated. These define themselves in terms of what they make. E.g ‘we make widgets, that’s what we do’. They make the product that suits them and hope it will suit others too. Nowadays, only a few SMEs, partnerships and sole traders conform to this model

Second generation businesses are sales orientated. They define themselves as widget sellers and say everyone must gear themselves to selling widgets and convincing others that they want widgets. Again, these tend to be SMEs.

Third generation businesses are marketing orientated. They say all this is wrong. A marketing orientated business first identifies what people need, want and desire. It then looks at its own skill set and identifies the ways in which it can fulfil those needs, wants and desires (which may or may not include making widgets). Then when it’s confident its offer meets consumer needs, wants and desires it hands over to sales to let the world know.

Marketing orientated business is already having long and detailed conversations with its customers. No supermarket, for example, would stock a product or rearrange its shelves without extensive conversations with customers. Theses businesses put huge effort into understanding what customers need, want and desire.

Yet you talk of marketing as if it’s a one way street, with brand owners fashioning product to suit themselves and then going out to convince consumers that they want what’s on offer. You’re describing second generation sales orientated businesses.

And then you say you’ve identified some trends that mean these sales oriented businesses should involve consumers in their ‘marketing’. If they do that, they’ll become third generation marketing oriented businesses. But some of us have already moved on to the fourth generation and are looking for the fifth. Doh!

[James Cherkoff]

Nice text book stuff Stephen, in my experience it very rarely looks anything like this in reality. Yes, of course, marketing is about understanding the market. However, the majority of large businesses, especially FMCG, peddle the type of theory you outline whilst really being slaves to a defunct broadcast model based on a 'golden age' sold to them by Big Media and their agencies.

[Stephen Newton]

Whatever way you cut it, all you’re saying now is that some businesses have failed to move from a sales to a marketing orientated approach (you’ve just repacked the original marketing concept as ‘open source marketing’). You certainly haven’t identified a new path for business that would be more effective than that taken successfully by others.

[Johnnie Moore]

This is a good primer on open source. It's always tempting to get into semantics about what's sales and what's marketing, but for me this misses the point. What's happening online is qualitatively very different from a great deal of sales/marketing we've seen in the past. There's a major blurring of the line between producer and buyer; I believe many companies will struggle to get this shift. The ones that do eg Ebay, Amazon, will probably thrive...

[Bruce DeBoer]

Marketing = what's in the best interest of the customer. Sales = what's in the best interest of the company. Marketing = Pull. Sales = Push. General descriptions but I think they work. It's good to have the vernacular down pat but how does it apply to Open Source? I don't see too much that is sales oriented in the Open Source examples that I've seen discussed.

I would love to participate in a discussion string that addresses how a company can generate an open source campaign for it's brand. Ebay developed a web space for others to play as does Amazon. It was deliberate and innovative.

A brand owner needs to harness this new tool and integrate it into their overall marketing strategy.

that's true becuased i was one of them