Yesterday, I wrote about what crowdsoucing is not. In short, it’s not competitions. For me, what crowdsourcing is can be summed up in one word: collaboration.

There are two ways you can collaborate with the crowd, coming up with ideas or executions. With either one though, there needs to be a strong moderator to guide the crowd. There has to be a leader, someone who provides focus and evaluation.

The leader brings the crowd together, not to pick the best idea, but to combine the strengths of all ideas. Some people call this process co-creation.

It’s important to note that this is not “creative by committee.” It’s a free flow of ideas and different points of view in order to come to the best overall idea. The main difference from a committee is that not everyone’s input has to be used, and you’re not nitpicking the concept, trying to make it appeal to everyone.

Just because an idea comes from the crowd doesn’t mean it has to appeal to the entire crowd.

Anyway, back to the two main ways to crowdsource. As I wrote earlier, the first is through idea generation. Think of this as a public brainstorm session. You open up to your audience. Let them suggest ideas or take others’ ideas and expand or refine them.

Opening up to your public at this early stage gives them the feeling that you value their opinions. Plus, you the benefit of knowing exactly what they want to hear and can customize your message to that.

That brings us to the second way to crowdsource – executions. This is where companies are confusing it with competitions (see yesterday’s post). Crowdsourcing your actual ad does not mean having everyone submit their own concept and creative.

Crowdsourcing creative starts with you and your agency. You define the campaign, the message and the tone. In many situations you can create ads to kick off the campaign.

At this point, you give control to the crowd. You give them the tools and the motivation to take what you’ve created and expand upon it. Based on your concept, they can create their own ads.

Lots of times, these will be spoofs, but more likely, people should enjoy the process of interacting with a brand they are passionate about. One of my favorite examples of this is the Bread Art Project.

Crowdsourcing is still new. This is only my early viewpoint on the whole idea, and it could change with time. But with so much potential, I hope that crowdsourcing becomes a collaborative tool and not just another advertising gimmick.