Earlier this week, Coca-Cola launched a new crowdsourcing initiative on Blank You Very Much (BYVM), a platform where brands interact with their fan base by inviting their consumers to participate in various design contests. The contest doesn’t entail creating a new logo for Coke, but instead incorporating a design that will go on a t-shirt. Judged by a panel consisting of five fairly well-known people within the design industry, the winner will receive a $5000 cash prize in addition to their artwork being featured on a limited edition t-shirt.

At first, I liked the idea of Coke interacting with its fans and customers and encouraging them to contribute to their company through an online contest. It’s a great way for Coke to appear more personable to the community by engaging them to create a positive design for the brand. However, as I thought more and more about it, I started to change my opinion on this initiative.

Some of the many designs Coke now retains the rights to

First and foremost, Coca-Cola is a multi-billion dollar company and the “grand prize” is only $5000? This pales greatly in comparison to some other crowdsourcing initiatives out there such as Pepsi’s Refresh Project which dishes out a combined $20 million, or The Netflix Prize which paid out $1 million to the winner. Secondly, as with most crowdsourcing initiatives, the rights to all the designs submitted are retained by the company. So in this case, BYVM and Coca-Cola will be free to use any submitted design at their discretion at any point in the future.

To me, this sounds more like exploitation than crowdsourcing. And after some research, I found I wasn’t the only one thinking this as well. Turns out AntiSpec founder Mark Collins has strongly voiced his opinion on the matter as well. In addition to some of the points I made above, he goes on to say:

“Aspiring designers don’t see the bigger picture. They don’t see that it devalues our profession. They don’t see that corporations like Coca-Cola are taking advantage for their own gain. All they see is the carrot dangling in front of them.”

Collins also thinks that these brands should be more responsible and be held accountable for their actions. He states:

“And the real shame is they probably do understand already, at least to a certain degree. Large successful businesses run on informed calculated decisions. Somebody at Coca-Cola decided that paying small change for thousands of hours of design work was too good to pass up.”

Yes I do realize that it’s a voluntary contest and that Coke isn’t forcing anyone to do their bidding or anything like that. And crowdsourcing isn’t always about extrinsic motivational factors like financial gain. Intrinsic motivational factors like personal pride, learning by practicing, developing a personal portfolio, striving to beat the competition, etc can all play a part into someone’s willingness to enter this contest.  So I guess it’s up for debate. Is crowdsourcing just a subtle way for corporations to exploit their participants? Is it only considered “exploitation” when it’s a large company at hand? You be the judge.