Arun Mehra: Brands Have Faith in their Crowd to Deliver Authentic Brand Identities

Registered attendees for Crowdsourcing Week Global ’14 already represent over 20 countries across 5 continents so far. To give you a little taste of what to expect at the conference, we are bringing a new ‘Speaker Spotlight’ series that showcases speakers’ work and their plans for CSW’14 and beyond.   Arun Mehra is presently the Chief Executive […]

Written by Priti Ambani

Mar 19, 2014

Registered attendees for Crowdsourcing Week Global ’14 already represent over 20 countries across 5 continents so far. To give you a little taste of what to expect at the conference, we are bringing a new ‘Speaker Spotlight’ series that showcases speakers’ work and their plans for CSW’14 and beyond.
 
Arun Mehra is presently the Chief Executive Officer with Talenthouse India, an online platform pioneering in creative collaboration. Arun took on the challenge of driving this completely new business in India, in a virgin territory of creative crowdsourcing. A veteran in the field of digital space he understood that if era one was information, era two was networking then now is the era of collaboration. With this learning and belief in the collaboration on web without boundaries and his ability to adapt in completely new environment, he is pioneering this first of its kind social media engagement platform.

Arun-Mehra1

1)  Tell us a little bit about your talk at Crowdsourcing Week Global 2014, what message are you bringing to the global stage in Singapore and why should people attend?

Talenthouse is an international platform for creative crowdsourcing across film, fashion, music, art, design and photography. We provide brands and celebrity mentors an opportunity to connect & engage with their target audience on the digital platform. Therefore, we chose a topic that will enlighten marketers and organisations on how they can get social media to work for them through artistic collaboration.

India has been in the forefront of the creative crowdsourcing space in all of SEA. It started gaining popularity after the Indian Government crowdsourced the Rupee symbol. In this session we will dwell into the multiple ways to gathering ideas, opinions and feedback by working with the crowd.

Understanding of creative crowdsourcing is a must for marketers as creative content has started playing an important role in the digital marketing arena and more such content will be developed. Creativity as a genre has mass appeal as everyone has a creative streak in them. Hence, we need to leverage Creative Crowdsourcing for our own business.

Crowdsourcing brings ideas of people together and CSW is bringing the crowdsourcing expertise together. CSW is a great platform for thinkers in crowdsourcing space to connect and share. Looking forward to engaging with you.

2)  What are the big changes you see coming to crowd-centric practices in Asia in the next 5 years?

At the pace at which Creative Crowdsourcing is being adopted we foresee a bright future for the Crowdsourcing industry. Crowdsourcing will be a part of the business in the following ways:

1.     Integral to campaigns: Crowdsourcing, open innovation and co-creation are going to be a part of mainline campaigns rather that it only being a support system today in the digital world. Brands small and big are going to apply this new paradigm of openness in their marketing and innovation strategies. 

 2.     Creative Network: Whilst brands have been crowdsourcing independently platforms like Talenthouse India boast of operational calibre. A platform like Talenthouse will help brands create, curate and plan campaign for brands to take advantage of the creative pool of talent available.

 3.     Content Curation: The rise of digital consumption has resulted in an overload of content. The coming year will be about curation of the current and new content for better usage. Platforms such as Pinterest, Quora, etc. have emerged on the basis of this need.

 4.     Target Specific Content: The world moving to smaller screens will result in a need for content that is engaging and what the consumer seeks for.

3)  What is the one area in crowdsourcing that has you most excited and why?

Crowdsourcing has witnessed  an increasing trend in brand and product crowdsourcing which means marketers are not only sourcing entertaining content but also rely on and have faith in the crowd to deliver brand identities and product innovations. More and more brands are adopting the method to connect to their audiences. This will result in crowdsourcing forming an integral part of brand campaigns.

4)  How is crowdsourcing transforming business?

The crowd provides insights and information that are crucial for brand development. E.g. Micromax the India based leading Asian mobile phone brand crowdsourced a punch logo which gave the brand a whole new meaning; from a brand which was ones know as a local player. The young and dynamic logo brought in new energies to connect with the youth. The transition of the brand since the crowdsourcing effort has seen Hugh Jackman roped in as the global ambassador and all this was possible due to the insights received from the crowd.   

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Join us for Arun’s session on Tuesday, April 8 at Crowdsourcing Week Global ’14 – register here.

About Author

About Author

Priti Ambani

Priti Ambani is the Global Media Director at Crowdsourcing Week, a thought leader and prominent writer on social enterprises, start-ups and web 2.0 businesses. Previously, Priti grew Ecopreneurist, a nascent green business blog into a notable social business resource as site director and managing editor. Working from the ground up, she has developed successful business and communications strategies for impact organizations that aim to create social, environment and economic wealth. Priti is a Professional Engineer and holds a Master’s degree in Biological Resources Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park.Priti lives in the Washington DC Metro area with her husband and sons, is a lover of the outdoors, traveling and from-scratch cooking!

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