How To Crowdsource: One Bakery's Sweet Marketing Story

By Helen Kobrin

Sitting alone at your desk does not necessarily bring a flood of innovative ideas.

This was my thought after looking at our bakery’s selection of French macaron. Bored and unenthusiastic about the assortment, I decided things needed spicing up.

I took my spicing-up idea to my mother, the shop’s top pastry chef and owner. Overwhelmed and consumed by her schedule, she told me to come up with a brilliant flavor.

Knowing nothing about baking, what’s a girl to do?

As I’ve always enjoyed bouncing ideas off of others, I went to the people. I was going to experiment with crowdsourcing.

Our bakery, Lana’s Dazzling Desserts (Lana is my mother), has developed a small fan base with our Twitter account and Facebook page. I asked our fans and followers to suggest a new macaron flavor. 


The incentive to participate? Whoever came up with the winning flavor would have the macaron named after them.

Crowdsourcing is a term originally coined by Jeff Howe in his 2006 Wired magazine article, ‘The Rise of Crowdsourcing’.

Howe defines crowdsourcing as “The act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.”

Wikipedia does a good job of describing this new business tool, and lists positive and negative aspects of utilizing crowdsourcing.

It’s one thing to sit in a classroom or behind a computer and learn about the world, but it’s a gift when you can learn from first-hand experience. Here is what I learned about implementing crowdsourcing:

• It cost us nothing to resolve the business problem.

• Our fans were enthusiastic to be part of our product development.

• The incentive of having one’s name on the macaron was enough to get people to engage. No giveaway was necessary.

• Although we were initially concerned that our fans would not be able to provide an idea that would translate well into a macaron, we now know not to underestimate the knowledge and experience of our customers.

• Even if we did not use the other ideas, we were able to take into account what dessert flavors our customers liked.

• Best of all, it was a great brainstorming experience.

After receiving 35 creative entries, we narrowed down the options and finally chose one. I’m happy to announce that our new Sasha macaron, a dusky pink black currant ganache pictured at the start of this piece, is already a hit. And all we had to do was ask the world for inspiration.

Helen Kobrin was born in Kiev, Ukraine and raised in Chicago. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology, a certificate in drug counseling and a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy. She joined the family business, Lana’s Dazzling Desserts in Wheeling, Illinois, where she manages the European bakery’s social media, sales and marketing.

Get The Training You Deserve: A Post For People Who Want Corporate Training But Don't Get It

by Linda Collard


This post is about mistakes I have made when it comes to looking after my own workplace learning. I love a good mistake. You can learn a great deal from it. And, in this case, I hope you can learn from my mistakes too.


You see I value learning, love it even, and I’ve often felt I’ve not had enough opportunities for formal training (there’s been a lot of on-the-job learning though).


Now having the opportunity to work with a corporate training company on some of their marketing and events – and learn about the business of training – I have recently realised this was as much my fault as it was my employers. Actually, more my fault. Here’s why.


Not so long ago, I worked in marketing communications for a global company. The core business of the company was certainly not what I did for a living. And before that? I was in the public affairs team of a large Australian telco. Again, I was firmly in a support function.


All of us in marketing, human resources, IT, finance and so on will know what I mean. When you’re in a support function, you are often reminded of this fact. You do not make money for the company. You are a cost centre. I don’t have a chip on my shoulder about it. I know what I do makes a difference to the bottom line (albeit a tricky one to measure).


However, where I did sometimes feel a little hard done by was when it came to training. Every performance review I asked for training in areas where I felt I needed it. Every performance review I was told I was fine without it. Okay, that’s a small exaggeration … over a period of years I have had one boss who understood and encouraged me to find suitable outside courses. I did one such course.


Back to the story though. Each of the organisations I have worked for had a substantial training and learning culture. Each required their people to be up-to-date and armed with the latest and greatest knowledge. Each had reams of training courses available. But none was suitable for employees outside the core business, those of us in support functions.


Now that I’ve done a little reading about return on investment (ROI) for corporate training, I see I could have used these principles to pitch for my own training. And win it. After all, numbers have boardroom respect.


Here are some ideas and resources for securing your own training opportunities:


• Ask. I’m pretty sure some people don’t get training opportunities because they don’t ask for them. You may be pleasantly surprised by the outcome. But have the conversation armed with a plan … see next point.


• Training is not necessarily your right. So establish a business case for your corporate training: Why you need it, and what difference your new knowledge and skills can make in meeting business objectives. Identify your skills gap, the objective of the training, where you can receive such training and how the results can be measured. Some measurement ideas can be found here. 


• Don’t be flattered. I admit it. When I used to say “I need training in team building and leadership” and got told “don’t be silly … you’re good at these things”, I was flattered enough to accept there would be no training for me. The truth is that these are skills that every one can always get better at, delivering better results in terms of productivity and retention - and I should not have had my head turned.


• A passionate HR or Learning and Development manager is your ally. Just because the skill you want to learn is not ‘core’ or on the list of training choices, doesn’t mean your HR manager cannot help you. They are almost certainly in their jobs because they believe learning can make a huge difference to people’s development, so ask for their help. They may be able to suggest certain training courses or even left-field ways for you to achieve your goals.


• If all else fails, try partnering. There’s nothing that says ‘I mean it’ like going ahead and taking your own course anyway. But instead of reverting to a fully self-funded model, why don’t you ask if your company will partially fund your training? Perhaps the company could pay for the travel and you the course, vice versa, or some other suitable arrangement. You get the training you need – and show how serious you are about your career – and obviously they benefit too. Perhaps next time they will pick up the full tab.


In my own case, I am nearly 100% sure taking the step to place a business case in front of my managers would have won me the right to my desired management and leadership training. Now that I work for myself, I’ll still need to do this … after all, a good business case with objectives and measurement aligned to overall goals is simply a requirement. Give it a try and let me know how you go.


Linda Collard is a Sydney-based marketer who runs her own consultancy. She has worked in Australia, the US and Hong Kong.

Stroke of Genius: Star Trek Kesha Mashup

The proverbial chalk and cheese combine into a laugh-out loud delightful tribute. Watch.

Trends via TrendHunter.com.

Why I Don't Believe In Personal Branding

In all the analysis about the BP oil spill, one of the most interesting topics is the subject of CEO Tony Hayward’s personal brand.

Apparently it’s plummeting because of his comments (“I just want my life back”) and that unfortunate photo of him on a yacht last Saturday.

I don’t know about you but if I were in Hayward’s shoes, the last thing to keep me up at night is all this guff about personal branding.

Yes, guff.  Hayward has a reputation problem, not a branding problem.

Now if you’re Calvin Klein and the ownership of your name for merchandising is critical to a company’s fortunes, the discussion might be a little different. (That's an April 2010 photo of Klein below, taken by zimbio at the Fashion Institute of Technology's BFA Fashion Show & Awards.)

I do understand, however, why people like to fancy themselves as brands.

In this day and age when marketing speak has infiltrated our collective consciousness, personal branding sounds really sexy.

Except real branding isn’t. It’s 5% creation and 95% drudgery.

After the initial high of coming up with logos and positioning statements, branding settles into a coma-inducing cycle of maintenance.

Have you heard of the marketer whose only job was to make sure all the McDonald’s french fry boxes across the world were the same, consistent shade of red as mandated by their brand guidelines?

Neither did I, until an agency head told me that that had been his father’s job. It didn’t sound terribly sexy to me. But there’s the reality of branding.

If you think you’re a brand, then you’re a lightweight without an approved palette of CMYK, RGB and Pantone colours, guidelines that determine how you should appear against light or dark backgrounds and pretty detailed instructions on everything from the official font you use to how you register across all touch points, from print to digital.

And that’s just appearance.

Is your language and voice consistent with your brand?

What about your choice of music?

Your choice of friends?

Sounds just a little bit fiddly and contrived, doesn’t it?

In 2003, Calvin Klein was acquired by Phillips-Van Heusen. The deal consisted of $430 million in cash and stock, with royalties to be paid to Klein through 2018.

For the first time, the designer did not have complete control over the products sold under his name.

I often wonder how he feels about crossing over from a name to a brand, what it took to get there and whether, strangely enough, there’s any turning back.

A quote attributed to the Audacity Group’s Mark di Soma goes, “Brand is the ‘f’ word of marketing.

“People swear by it, no one quite understands its significance and everybody would like to think they do it more often than they do.”

The best brands are predictable, consistent and repetitious. They’re rigidly managed. That’s what makes them successful.

People are complex, conflicted and contradictory. That’s what makes us human.

Yet it also gives us the freedom to recreate ourselves, everyday, as better persons.

Which would you rather do?

Photo of Calvin Klein at The Fashion Institute's BFA Fashion Show & Awards courtesy of zimbio.com

Walking Your Sahara: Taking The Path That Is Completely Your Own

"I have completed things in the past, but nothing substantial. I wanted to do the PhD because I wanted to explore every aspect of a phenomenon I was passionate about. I wanted to research the past and present, I wanted to understand. I also wanted to train my mind to stay on one thing. Ha! At least I’ve learned to complete multiple things. 


"But the training of the mind was important. I wanted to learn how to form an argument, to have knowledge that can be communicated in a sophisticated manner. I was very surprised by what I discovered."


So wrote transmedia expert Christy Dena, very eloquently, in her blog post about finishing her thesis after seven years, a lifetime for most of us. For everyone who's pursued a passion, a vocation that not many understood or found logical, you'll completely relate to what she said.


Read Christy's post here. Follow Christy on Twitter.

"If you don't design your life, someone else will do it for you"

So said Nigel Marsh very eloquently in his speech at Tedx Sydney. Marsh is regional brands group CEO for Y&R. He has also penned Fat, Forty and Fired and Overworked and Underlaid.



Many thanks to Linda Collard for sharing this on Twitter.