Need new ideas for your tagline? Wondering what to name your soon-to-be-launched product? Who are you going to ask?

May we suggest, you ask the ‘crowd’. Crowdsourcing or turning to the large online community for ideas and suggestions is fast turning into a popular way of addressing multiple business goals. Specially increasing brand recall and engagement while generating new ideas.

The collaborative nature of web 2.0 makes this easier. Add to it a vast open source community, and you have an empowered audience. What does it take to pose a query or ask this audience to share their ideas? A posting or two on your interactive platforms such as blogs, Twitter page, and FaceBook profile. Throw in a reward to build excitement and spur participation, and you’ll have hundreds of ideas flooding your communication channels.

Many corporates are exploring the advantages that crowdsourcing has to offer. The obvious being low costs and an easy way to engage masses, across geographies. Of course, the entire crowdsourcing initiative needs to be monitored carefully. You need to define your requirements, specify criteria, talk to people who respond, and once you’ve hit the nail you were looking for, acknowledge the success of an initiative.

Call it ‘democratising’ your creative process. But with the list of advantages outweighing risks, it may be worth your while to ask the crowd to help with stories for your new ad campaign.