Crowdsourcing or exploitation?

This week I wanted to touch on something that had taken over the internet (well LinkedIn) as of the end of last week. That is the latest marketing stunt by Thursday.

For those not familiar with Thursday, they are a new dating app that, unlike its competitors, is only available one day a week- on a Thursday. Any other day of the week and you are directed to a holding message and instructed to come back on the correct day. They have become well renowned within the Marketing community for their guerrilla stunts and challenger approach to brand building.

Their latest campaign involved booking an empty spot on the underground and asking the LinkedIn community to help fill it.

There were some brilliant submissions. And resulted in people (many of whom fall beautifully within their target audience) further investing in the brand, and in turn spreading their message for them.

I have commented before on how smart I think the brand's LinkedIn strategy is. As founders, they have been vocal about raising significant investment and have used the platform to make as much noise as possible. All of this will proliferate out to investors- either enabling discovery, or cue'ing to them that this is a brand worth watching.

But, if we take a step back from the creativity of crowdsourcing, this is ultimately a commercial project, designed to build awareness of the brand and get people to sign up to the app.

It is the topic of 'the winner's prize' that gained the campaign the most amount of coverage.

In return for the best creative line, the winner would be given a named creative credit. No payment, just a written acknowledgement.

And this is where the campaign gets very divisive.

Some saw it as a bit of fun, this was not just for the creative community, anyone could get involved and get their name and entry splashed across the tube station.

The second camp was that this felt exploitative. Good creativity is a skill and deserves to be recognised and paid. Whether or not the winner is a copywriting professional, this is commercial work, and work should be recognised and paid.

For Thursday, it is unlikely that they gave the prize a second thought. Crowdsourcing and UGC content is a well-trodden path, but where Thursday, fell short is that they forgot that context is everything.

As a brand, you need to meet your consumer where they are at emotionally, this means understanding how they are thinking and feeling at that moment in time about the world. The campaign was released at the same time that news headlines are awash with the cost of living crisis, the interest on student loan repayments expected to rise exponetially, a recession looming so for a brand to be not paying for work seems elitist and out of touch.

This is a bump in the road for Thursday, the founder has acknowledged that the campaign has resulted in it's record number of downloads. And whilst I am in total agreement that you are never and should never try and appeal to everyone, for the long term perception of the brand you want to make sure that you are cognisant of the challenges of your customers.

I would love to know what you think?