Crowdsourcing: The Next Big Thing

Here's the winning entry of Mitt Romney’s ad contest:



I agree wholeheartedly with Patrick Ruffini, who calls this

the best television ad for any candidate of any part so far this election. And it was created not by some big media consultant by Ryan Whitaker, a 23-year old student from Provo, Utah.

The raw footage, music, and speechifying was provided by the Romney media team. But it’s mixed together better than anything the campaign has released so far. It’s also head and shoulders above most of the other entries, showing that Ryan has a real eye for this kind of stuff—something that only an initiative like this could have brought out.

This is the spirit of crowdsourcing taken to a new level. Most organizations do user-generated content to get some free press or motivate supporters—but don’t expect the end product to be anything they can use in any strategic way. This is different, and a bar-raiser.