Harnessing the masses: Crowdsourcing creative

Posted by: Neil Callanan

Perhaps the most impactful trend to hit marketing and advertising in the last year or so has been the adoption of crowdsourcing. While it may not have the publicity of twitter, the impact on the industry is unmatched. Wikipedia defines it like this:

"Crowdsourcing is a neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call"

In the marketing world this means that instead sourcing a project to a big agency who will then assign 1-10 creatives to create deliverables, a company (or agency) sources out to a mass of creatives who submit entries with the hope of being selected as the winner. However, only the winner(s) get paid for their work. Management of the process has been made easy with the help of companies such as GeniusRocket, Crowdspring & 99designs.

Nearly all types of work can be crowdsourced, including design of logos, websites, and ads ; visual production,  such as commericals and photography; and conceptual creative such as campaigns, taglines and product names.

In the next few days, we'll be announcing a crowdsourcing project for our newest Aptela product with the help of our friends at GeniusRocket. As soon as the contest is live, we'll post a link. Additionally, as we go through the process and highlight any issues we come across.

Get the creative juices flowing, everyone is a potential winner! Stay tuned for details.