Is Anybody Out There... who can help Maroon 5 and Coca-Cola come up with a new song?

Wikipedia, one of the greatest examples of a crowdsourced project, defines crowdsourcing as "the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers."

Crowdsourcing is an excellent tactic in real-time PR because it allows publics to contribute to projects that would normally be handled by a handful of company executives: for example, having fans vote on their favorite name for a new product via social media. Crowdsourcing is beneficial to both the company and the publics because it eliminates the extra work for executives and allows the community to get involved.

In 2011, Coca-Cola partnered with Maroon 5 to successfully crowdsource material for a new song. Fans were able to weigh in on the composition of the song by sending in comments, lyrics and pictures via interactive technology, Facebook and Twitter. The recording session was streamed live and fans were able to constantly chime in on the project conversation and ask Maroon 5 questions. Here is the final product:

For the first 100,000 downloads of the song, "Is Anybody Out There", Coca-Cola made a donation to the Coca-Cola Africa Foundation's Replenish Africa Initiative with the hopes of providing clean water to thousands of people in Africa. This was just another way for Coca-Cola to make participants feel like they were making a positive difference. 

By getting their fans involved in this project, Maroon 5 and Coca-Cola created a surprisingly catchy song in just 24 hours. More importantly, they connected with their fans on a new level and allowed them to feel like they were a part of something big. According to Chapter 9 of Real-Time Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott, "When people help you answer a question via crowdsourcing they feel a sense of ownership. Participation turns spectators into supporters" (p. 102). This was especially true for the Coca-Cola and Maroon 5 project. People didn't want to just watch the live feed, they wanted to support Coca-Cola and Maroon 5 and help them create a new song by providing input via social media.

At the end of the day, crowdsourcing is a win-win for real-time marketers and PR people because it allows companies to speed up the pace of business and connect with customers in real-time.