With Creative Commons, Marketers Can Share Good Ideas with the World

As consumers, investors and policymakers increasingly call on corporate leaders to use their resources to promote social good, many businesses are rising to the challenge. This was especially evident at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when private-sector innovation helped medical workers overcome critical supply shortages and charitable contributions supported families in need.

More recently, companies have helped lead efforts to encourage people to get vaccinated via public service marketing campaigns. By providing free-to-use campaign collateral through the Creative Commons licensing platform, for instance, our marketing firm enabled organizations such as Latinx-owned Raices Brewing Company and the Colorado Brewers Guild to participate in a public service campaign to promote COVID-19 vaccines.

But what does Creative Commons licensing mean, exactly?

Founded in 2001, the Creative Commons platform was built to establish safeguards for preserving knowledge, culture and creativity as the internet evolved. Although the traditional trademark and patent process seeks to limit sharing and imitation to preserve profits for businesses, the Creative Commons tool does the opposite: It eliminates financial barriers and intellectual property restrictions, encouraging people to share and magnify good ideas so that they reach as wide an audience as possible – but within clear parameters.

As part of the organization’s response to the pandemic, it’s leading the Open Covid Pledge, a collaborative effort that includes Facebook, Amazon, IBM and many other leading global companies. The initiative has effectively unlocked countless patents to provide the public with free standard licenses to knowledge and assets that could help combat the virus.

More Reach, More Possibilities

For behavior change marketing to be truly effective, it must reach a critical mass of people. If you’re looking for a way to amplify marketing solutions – and encourage them to go viral – Creative Commons licensing is among your best options. It allows you to remove the barriers that might typically prevent access to creative ideas and achieve more traction.

These licenses contain the rules governing the use of the creative (i.e., whether it can be adapted, whether it needs to be sourced to the original creator and so forth) and can be developed to fit almost any objective. They get attached to tangible works such as logos, slogans or design elements.

An agency could provide the necessary permissions in a simple, standardized way. No one needs to hire a lawyer to understand how to use these licenses; it’s a level playing field for all.

The Power of Sharing

In today’s marketing world, Creative Commons is still a vastly underutilized channel. Most people understand the concept of a patent or trademark and recognize the ® or ™ symbols, but not many marketers are taking an open-source approach to sharing their ideas. With luck, that will change in the near future.

Although intellectual property restrictions play an important role in the global economy, Creative Commons can benefit society in numerous ways. Moreover, the open-source approach to sharing knowledge has helped build some of the world’s most profitable companies. Adobe, Google, Intel, Oracle and countless others in the tech space have contributed to and benefited from open-source projects. Even Tesla, battling for market share in the ultracompetitive auto industry, has relinquished patents on its technology.

In fact, this approach is precisely why people around the globe are able to receive effective vaccines against COVID-19 just a little over a year after the science was discovered. Open-platform science (and specifically the unprecedented sharing of preprint research among medical researchers) accelerated enormously during the pandemic, and the whole world has benefited.

Creating an Open Future

Tools such as Creative Commons can help drive innovation in marketing in ways that traditional approaches simply can’t. Particularly when it comes to public service campaigns, the open approach to sharing materials can allow marketers to reach new audiences and effect real, positive change. Before that can happen, more industry insiders will need to learn about and test the platform and share their insights with peers in the space. After all, there’s no reason not to spread good ideas.

Author

  • Eric Anderson

    Eric Anderson is co-founder and senior strategist at SE2, a Colorado-based integrated communications and marketing agency focused on behavior change.

Get our newsletter and digital focus reports

Stay current on learning and development trends, best practices, research, new products and technologies, case studies and much more.