Crowd Sourcing – A Unique Socially Responsible Solution

In this age of shared responsibility, and with the ease of access to information gathered and shared both online and offline, it’s no surprise to see the public stepping up to provide innovative and unique socially responsible solutions. Crowd sourcing, a trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve goals, has become quite a social networking tool that is helping to provide socially responsible solutions to many of society’s problems and restore health to many as a result.

Working Together For Positive Social Change

According to a recent study commissioned by Edelman PR, a majority of people desires to actively work together with businesses, brands and government to create enduring positive social change. Take for instance the recent BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.  While BP and the federal government are at work attempting to cap the well, literally an army of possible solution providers has come forward to pitch ideas and concepts to aggressively rid Gulf and shoreline of oil. As of the date of this blog entry, as many as eight thousand individuals and organizations have come forward with proposed solutions. Many of us know of the recommendations proposed by celebrities like James Cameron and Kevin Costner, but few know of proposals like the SQUID device. Regardless of the end outcome and solutions for the BP oil spill disaster, crowd sourcing is an unprecedented development that taps in to the collective genius of people.

Community Projects

Another example of crowd sourcing for positive social change is from Healthy Living Marketing client, Pepsi, and the brand’s Refresh Project. Pepsi is spending a reported $ 20 million in 2010 to fund local community projects created and voted on by the public. According to Dori Molitor of WomanWise, the Pepsi Refresh Project is a fine example of not only connecting with the brand’s “consumers as individuals, but also as communities who work together to make the world a better place.” Molitor refers to this as “me, we, higher purpose”. According to Bonin Bough with Pepsi, the Refresh Project goes far beyond social media and is “about building a social engagement platform that can take the brand beyond one that you know and love to being the brand that is aligned with your passions and enabling you to move the world forward. It’s not only funding passions and projects, the Project has created a forum where people are coming together, sharing ideas and letting their voices be heard on a broader platform.” To date, the Project’s website, RefreshEverything.com has generated more than three million unique visitors, one million registrations, and more than five million votes since the program’s launch in late January 2010.

What other problems can crowd sourcing help solve in the immediate future, where many potential assets go unutilized? One could be the redistribution of 95 billion tons of food wasted each year in the U.S. to help feed the hungry and malnourished. Another could be the continued deterioration of the U.S. education system.

If you would like to learn more about Healthy Living Marketing and Web 2.0 technologies made available for brand equity enhancements, please contact us at (301) 378-0384.

Tags: community projects, crowd sourcing, positive social change, social responsibility, socially responsible, solutions to society’s problems