AUTOMOTIVE

Citroen to "crowd-source" the design of a Special Edition on Facebook

April 4, 2012

Citroen is crowd sourcing the design of a new C1 variant through Facebook

With the internet connecting not just billions of computers but billions of creative minds, the news that Citroën UK was collaborating with Facebook to "crowd-source" the design of a new C1 variant at first appeared very exciting. The reality of the situation though, is that participants "choose" the number of doors (2 or 4), the interior and exterior colors and ... just six multiple choice options to configure the "C1 Connexion".

Members of the public are being invited to choose the features they want in their C1 with the most popular version to go into production - the trouble is, I cannot see any differences between this car and the versions normally available on a brochure.

Like most people, we find the idea of crowd-sourcing very exciting but this particular implementation, while it may or may not be clever social media marketing, seems to fall well short of its potential in terms of generating design ideas.

The configuration process is open until April 30. The teaser video is below.

About the Author

After Editing or Managing over 50 print publications primarily in the role of a Magazine Doctor, Mike embraced the internet full-time in 1995 and became a "start-up all-rounder" – quite a few start-ups later, he founded Gizmag in 2002. Now he can write again. All articles by Mike Hanlon