Crowdsourcing works in financing a new product or idea - think KickStarter, gauging interest in a new invention - Quirky, for household chores - Task Rabbit, or dating advice - Crowdpilot.

In contrast, crowdsourcing is a bad idea for on-the-field competitive sports decisions, in seeking medical treatment, or when needing legal advice. The reason is that specialized expertise is required for each, an expertise not found in an unspecialized crowd.

Crowdsourcing product names is another bad idea, as Fast Company indicates the results are a bunch of terrible names:

You surrender control over the quality of what you get. Many of the [naming] candidates you receive won't reflect your desired messages or tonality because you're asking the masses, who aren't experts in your business or category. They're generalists...

[T]o create [a difficult to forget] brand, you...need to establish [a relationship leading to] intimacy. Casual encounters don't build consistency or quality; [rather] they're more likely to yield the least common denominator... 

Asking people to vote on names is [not appropriate]. Popularity is misleading, and the number of votes often has no bearing on whether the target market finds the name appealing.

Russell Völckmann, founder of Völckmann + friends based in San Francisco, makes the larger point by saying the work of brand strategy - including product naming - is not a job effectively crowdsourced: 

When important business and brand decisions are put to a vote through non-expert contributions, the results are almost always disastrous, skewed towards...conformity that will never surprise or delight.

The entire point of brand strategy is to be indelibly nonconformist.

People quickly skip past indistinguishable products. Instead, brands win preference and earn a devoted following when easily distinguished as extraordinary.

For brand strategy creation, crowdsourcing is antithetical to extraordinary.

Crowdsourcing your brand strategy has one advantage: everyone has their say. But much like design by committee, no one likes the result. 

In brand creation, don't follow the crowd.

Unless you prefer anonimity.

And ownership of an obscure commodity, rather than treasured brand.

[Image Source: Fast Company]