Micromax has fallen back on crowdsourcing to revamp the company’s logo. The Delhi-based mobile handset maker has organised a nationwide creative hunt in the digital space in association with Talenthouse India, a joint venture between Reliance Entertainment, the flagship media and entertainment arm of India’s Reliance Group, and the California-based, Talenthouse. Says Pratik Seal, country head, marketing, Micromax India, “The design that reflects the brand’s personality — that is, young, innovative, audacious, outgoing, dynamic, fluid and energetic with an international appeal — will surely be on the top.”
The contest targets the design community across the virtual world. Students from over 150 colleges and design schools such as Picasso Animation College, Arena Animation, ZICA Animation Institute, Raffles Design Institute, and FX School of Photography, working professionals and established designers have been invited to participate in this contest and showcase their creativity. “This contest is a great way to connect with consumers and learn how they perceive the brand. The entries that come in from artists across the country will give us more interesting options than have just one agency working on it,” says Seal.
From its own admission, Micromax got the idea of crowdsourcing from the Government of India. “When we saw the Indian Government getting the rupee symbol with the help of crowdsourcing, we decided to take this bold step to get the company’s logo redesigned,” says Arun Mehra, chief executive officer, Talenthouse India. “It is a calculated risk, which every marketer needs to take at some point or the other. The only challenge which lies in these digital contests is that many of the participants are still not net savvy. However, with the improvement and easy accessibility of technology, we believe this barrier will also cease to exist in a few years.”
Of course, the trend of soliciting customer input is not new, and the whole movement for open-source software demonstrated it can be done with a large number of people. Today as technology is becoming cheaper and more friendly, it is becoming easier for brands to enlist more and more non-technical people to do more complex and creative tasks, at significantly reduced cost.
Participants need to upload their logo, submitting a minimum of one and a maximum of three designs on www.talenthouse.com and on the social media page of Micromax. The logo should reflect the brand’s tagline ‘Nothing like anything’. The winner, to be announced on February 28, 2012, will be awarded an Apple Mac book pro. Adds Seal, “This is only a digital campaign; we will be present across the web space including the social media sites and the blogs. We believe that the digital space is the most efficient way to target the designer community.”
For Micromax, these are interesting times. The company has been rated the 12th largest handset manufacturer in the world, with one per cent share globally, by a Strategy Analytics report. Strategy Analytics tracks the world’s 30 largest handset vendors on a quarterly basis.