Recently AdAge ran a piece that fits quite nicely with a panel I especially look forward to at next09. The question Katarina Skoberne from OpenAd and Ross Kimbarovsky of crowdSPRING will discuss next Wednesday on stage goes straight to the heart of agencies' creative departments.
We typically think of "creativity" as a singular effort with the Steve Jobs or Lee Clows of the world -- the solitary individual known as much for their personality as their work -- at the helm. But creativity has always been a social activity. Today's creative agencies are supposed to be hothouses of ideas with charismatic leaders and collaborative teams. Fostering a creative culture counts -- after all, Warhol's factory wasn't just a live/work loft. But what happens when the technology behind crowdsourcing makes creativity a social activity that knows no geographic bounds? Where does the creative produced by the collective take us? Do we visit wild new frontiers or does a herd mentality take hold?
These are tough questions for everyone involved in the agency business. But let's have a look at the short introductions AdAge wrote about both companies:
OpenAd.net: The most disruptive trend for the advertising industry is the crowdsourcing of creative ideas and design services. OpenAd.net is one of the most prominent examples. The service bills itself as a global online marketplace for great advertising, marketing and design ideas. OpenAd.net provides marketers the ability to generate advertising ideas from a distributed network of more than 11,500 creatives from more than 125 countries. Major brands such as MTV, Virgin Atlantic and DaimlerChrysler have all sourced ad work from the company.
Crowdspring: Crowdspring is the most controversial of the companies now offering crowdsourced creative services. The company, which was just nominated for a Webby Award, boasts a network of more than 20,000 creatives from 140-plus countries who vie to provide logo, website and collateral design to primarily small and medium-size business clients. The end results are impressive, as the literally hundreds of submissions made by the designers "on spec" are displayed for the world to see and rate. For example, a recent logo project for "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk generated nearly 275 submissions. A logo for BBH Labs has garnered nearly 1,200 submissions.
Leave a comment