The latest adventure in crowdsourcing comes from The National Radio Astronomy Observatory, who are giving the public at large the opportunity to come up with a new name for the newly revamped Very Large Array (VLA).

What, the person who came up with Very Large Array wasn’t available?

Crowdsourcing is a hot-button topic for people in the branding profession, many of whom see it as devaluing their work; some of whom see it as a surefire way to guarantee a poor result.

We understand the seductive appeal to organizations of generating more logo or name options more cheaply than by hiring professionals, but before you rush out to launch a naming or design contest (either external or employee-only), we urge you to consider the following:

1. A very large part of what a competent creative partner will do is help to tightly define the problem that the name or design needs to solve. Will contest participants do the same?
2. Furthermore, they’ll hold you to that definition of the problem. If you’ve got a tight brief, it’s much harder for the CEO to choose a name or logo by fiat just because it reminds him of his pet goldfish.
3. Finally, you’ll benefit from the fact that professionals spend a lot of time looking at and thinking about names and logos – what’s current, what’s next and what’s yesterday’s news. Names and logos are subject to fads (light flares, or names beginning and ending with ‘A’ anyone?) as much as any other creative field, and it behooves you to be aware of them lest you fall prey to them.

As we’ve written ad nauseam on this blog, creative work is not about coming up with something that people ‘like’. Kraft was sure people liked iSnack 2.0, after all. That is, before they found out that people actually didn’t.

Rather, creative work is about coming up with something that communicates a proposition or emotion effectively. If it does, and if the product or service it’s communicating about is worthwhile, then people will learn not only to like, but to love the name in short order. If you don’t believe us, just ask the folks who came up with Wii and iPad.

Be Sociable, Share!

•