Archive for the 'advertising' Category

21
Apr
13

colossal spark

By AdminAK Leave a Comment
Categories: advertising, creativity, crowdsourcing advertising, crowdsourcing commercials, crowdsourcing ideas, crowdsourcing marketing ideas and Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

cosp

www.colossalspark.com

Their Service Description: BRAND-BUILDING IDEAS FROM THE ADVERTISING WORLD’S LEADING CREATIVE MINDS

Our Impression: is biased. ‘Cause it’s us, I mean, from us. Jawohl, Colossal Spark is our brain-child and it just launched. Since it doesn’t feel quite right to talk about it here, like any other crowdsourcing site, it’s best if you just checked it out yourself. (In a nutshell – it’s designed to become the destination for brand managers who are used to “Madison Avenue levels of creativity”.)

Colossal Spark operates out of New York.

17
Apr
13

Boom Ideanet – a contestant’s perspective

By KBX911 Leave a Comment
Categories: advertising, creativity, crowdsourcing, crowdsourcing advertising, crowdsourcing commercials, crowdsourcing ideas and crowdsourcing marketing ideas
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The brains and doers behind Boom Ideanet belong to the good guys in the Crowdsourcing industry. Steve Wood, the man in charge, communicates brilliantly when it comes to briefs and very timely when the results are in. Boom Ideanet has a very fair compensation structure and I am happy to say that I have been compensated for most of the contests I participated in. It’s one of the few sites where there are regular contests with participation payment.

Boom mostly has TV script briefs, but every now and then there are Selling Idea Briefs and Mood Board Briefs. The client is a Fortune 400 Retailer and working on this brand regularly is very different from other Crowdsourcing sites where every contest you enter is a different brand/product/company/service. You get a hang of the brand and your ideas improve with every brief. Of course, there have been other clients as well and Boom is doing well to attract more.

There are tons of Logo Contest sites out there for Designers, but very few that writers can regularly take part in – Boom is one of them. Tongal is there with its Idea Stage in Contests, but it is more directed towards filmmakers and all aspects of production. Alternative Genius has TV briefs, but they aren’t too regular.

Boom’s payment system is very good. They are assigned creators and open participants. The assigned creators get a guaranteed participation amount provided they enter a minimum number of ideas that satisfy the brief. The open category contestants don’t get a guaranteed amount, but for those that win from this pool, the award amount is higher than that of the assigned creators. In all cases though, if yours is one of the few early bird entries you get a nice participation prize, usually around $250. The total award pool per project varies from a $5-20k and sometimes even more. Before the entry deadline participants don’t get to see what others have entered, but Boom’s portfolio page lists the produced videos later on, so everyone can see and be inspired by all the ideas in the running.

03
Apr
13

Slogan Slingers – a contestant’s perspective

By KBX911 Leave a Comment
Categories: advertising, creativity, crowdsourcing and crowdsourcing advertising
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

SloganSlingers focuses exclusively on Slogan/Tagline contests. They get enough clients to keep the contestants busy. In my experience with them, I’ve seen around 5 new contests happen every week. There are a very few other sites that run slogan contests – like SquadHelp and CrowdSpring. Apart from the word of mouth, if someone is looking to get a slogan/tagline through Crowdsourcing and decides to Google for a site, SloganSlingers’ SEO and top listing in Google results will ensure that they will find them first.

I had joined this site when they launched, but I had regrettably deleted my account after seeing that the first 2 contests I participated in got cancelled. At that time I felt that this was yet another scam site. But recently I came back to the site and am happy that I did, in a span of 2 months I’ve won 3 contests.

The contest process is very simple and straightforward. The client comes, deposits money, answers questions in a brief and the contest is launched. New contestants are limited to 3 entries and at some point (either after winning the first contest or when the site admin approves your entries) you get to enter a maximum of 6 entries per contest.

The great thing about SloganSlingers is that they pay the winner within 2 days instead of prolonging the payment like many other sites. The best thing is that they reveal the winners so you can see which entry won and compare it to your own entries. This makes the contestant trust the site more and it seems more transparent. Their entry template is very fast, you can enter 6 slogans within a minute as compared to SquadHelp’s entry box which takes 10-15 seconds to load for each entry.

Even though they mention “Guaranteed Prize” on every contest there are many that get cancelled. But they have many contests that get completed – i.e. winner chosen and paid, so one doesn’t feel like complaining. CrowdSpring on the other hand has a higher ratio of cancelled contests.

SloganSlingers email notifications are also very simple and straightforward and you end up reading them and acting on them rather than just marking them as read or deleting them.

Overall, SloganSlingers is a better choice for clients & contestants over SquadHelp or CrowdSpring.

23
Nov
12

Adhack

By AdminAK Leave a Comment
Categories: advertising, creativity, crowdsourcing ideas and crowdsourcing marketing ideas
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http://adhack.com/
Their Service Offering: Adhack works with agencies and brands to develop nimble, responsive, compelling digital campaigns and movements.
Our Impression: Adhack has positioned itself well as an agency that understands clients with the need for fast, lean, progressive online campaign solutions. Even mentioning “movements” implies an expertise in non-advertising smelling, relevant WOM triggers designed to gain a following. What sets Adhack apart from other agencies that tout their expertise in co-creation initiatives, real-time feedback loops and all that other good sounding stuff, is their community sourced creative department, a la Victors & Spoils… unfortunately it looks like Adhacks doors will be closing pretty soon, judging by the date of their last blog entry.
Operation is based out of Vancouver, Canada.

24
Sep
12

Boom Ideanet

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Categories: advertising, creativity, crowdsourcing and crowdsourcing ideas
Tags: ,

 

http://www.boomideanet.com/
Their Service Description: Boom Ideanet is an online platform for idea sourcing and execution. We offer businesses a project-based, budget-friendly creative resource for ideas. We offer creators a source of challenges that delivers clear ground rules for participation, fair compensation and prompt payment. To both businesses and creators, Boom Ideanet represents a low-risk, high-reward proposition.
Our Impression: A true agency killer in-the-making. Just like the big ad agencies, Boom Ideanet focuses on ideas first and executions second. The founder has an informed ease to express his entrepreneurial vision and promotes transparency as an important business mantra. Yet above all – fairness in terms of creative compensation and the acknowledgement of flaws in most creative crowdsourcing models. So it feels like Boom Ideanet is run by creatives, not business folks, which in theory should lead to better results for marketers willing to give them a shot. However, what is impossible to get a good sense of, is what’s really behind these walls. The site provides no evidence as to how big the crowd is, who’s in it (including the management team) and what kind of experience the creatives have. It drops a few hints pointing to an extensive commercial production apparatus, which unfortunately leaves a taste that Boom Ideanet could just be a promotional tool to catch clients way upstream with the sole intention to produce commercials.
Operation is based out of Kansas City.

01
Jun
12

Slogan Slingers

By AdminAK Leave a Comment
Categories: advertising, creativity and crowdsourcing
Tags: ,

http://www.sloganslingers.com/
Their Service Offering: Let Talented Slogan Writers compete To Create Your Catchy Slogans And Taglines. From Ad Slogans And Taglines To Company Slogans, You Can Start A Slogan Contest In Minutes!
Our Impression: The founder makes a few good points of how involved and costly it can be to produce good taglines. Just like with graphics, it is a great luxury of our times to be able to crowdsource ideas and simply pick what fits best. That said, Slogan Slingers is definitely a promising idea and if they are able to deliver quality, it’ll be quite a blow to ad agencies who pride themselves to be masters at distilling a brand’s purpose down to a few memorable words.
But for now, Slogan Slingers is targeting the small business world and that is exactly the space they belong into. The site and all featured results are far from being at par with the kind of writing any talent employed by Madison Avenue agencies delivers.

03
Apr
12

Victors And Spoils

By AdminAK 4 Comments
Categories: advertising, creativity and crowdsourcing
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https://victorsandspoils.com
Their Service Description: Everything an ad agency does.
Our impression: Traditional agency model with a handful of people on staff, but a crowdsourced creative department. V&S’s creative director makes sure the work is solid and on brief.

This just in: Today, French advertising company Havas has acquired a majority stake in U.S.-based Victors & Spoils, for an undisclosed amount.

Since its humble start in 2009, V&S has added the following blue-chip clients to their roster: Chipotle, Coca-Cola,  Converse,  Crocs, Discovery Channel,  Dish,  GAP,  General Mills,  Harley Davidson,  Levi’s,  Mercedes Benz, Oakley, PayPal, Unilever and Virgin America. Havas said that one of the first joint projects between the two companies will be to use Victors & Spoils technology to “create a 15,000 person professional Havas ‘crowd’ to source ideas from”.
Questions arise. How will the “crowd creatives” react? Will V&S’s pioneering culture vanish? Is V&S about to enter a world of client conflicts? Will V&S’s CEO John Winsor be fully absorbed by the challenges of holding the new title of Chief Innovation Officer for all of Havas?
Operation is based out of Boulder, Colorado, US.

26
Oct
11

mofilm

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Categories: advertising, creativity and crowdsourcing commercials
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http://www.mofilm.com/
Their Service Description: Inspiring filmmakers create videos for big brands and social causes. Our revolutionary new process is transforming the video creation industry by connecting brands more directly with film-makers and eliminating multiple layers of beauracracy and administration which waters down creativity and inflates costs in traditional processes.
Our Impression:  A very interesting concept. Most other crowdsourcing businesses simply connect clients with creators, but mofilm wraps its idea around existing film festivals for added exposure. Winning directors get to travel to the festivals. But because there probably isn’t a lot of money in that model, mofilm’s end goal seems to be to build a divers stable of film makers who can service clients directly, without the idea-generating ad agency middle man.
Operation is based out of London, Bangalore and Los Angeles

24
Sep
11

pomegranate

By AdminAK Leave a Comment
Categories: advertising, creativity, crowdsourcing and crowdsourcing marketing ideas
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http://pom8.com/
Their Service Description: Pomegranate is a digital marketing and creative agency structured to function as dynamically as our clients require. Pomegranate’s mission is to organize the world’s best creative talent, and make it available to clients in a scalable, collaborative form.
Our Impression: While the site and descriptive video are put together quite well, it is impossible to tell how successful or miserable Team Pomegranate is. Given the lack of news and site updates it sure seems like the latter. The reason we mention Pomegranate as part of Agency Killers, is because of their ambition to create a vast and functional creative community, rather than having everyone on staff. Verdict is still out…
Operation is based out of New York.

28
Aug
11

Ludvik + Partners

By AdminAK Leave a Comment
Categories: advertising, creativity and crowdsourcing
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http://ludvikplus.com/
Their Service Description: Full service advertising & marketing agency built 100% on crowdsourcing model.
Our Impression: Ludvik doesn’t know what it really is. It claims to operate on a new level of crowdsourcing principles, while it also describes itself as a community of freelancers, or in Ludvik’s words “ a network of hundreds of experienced and highly talented art directors, creatives and account representatives from across the country”. Ludvik isn’t shy to beat it own chest either “Think of the best agency you’ve ever enjoyed working with. Now subtract the expensive Class A office space, the expense account lunches, the dead weight that nobody knows how to fire, the suits and the commutes and you’ll begin to understand Ludvik’s enormous advantage.” and as a result comes off as immature, bordering on desperate. While clients may get a good deal and service from founder Epirot Ludvik, they will most likely also hear the occasional rant of a frustrated ex-agency guy.
Operation is based out of NY.

 

 

 

01
Aug
11

GiantHydra

By AdminAK Leave a Comment
Categories: advertising and creativity
Tags: ,

http://gianthydra.com
Their Service Description: A collaborative, online, idea-generation technology developed for advertising agencies and creative professionals alike. GiantHydra allows agencies to harness the ideas from hundreds of creative talents around the world, all working together in a way that revolutionizes the creative process.
Our Impression: GiantHydra, the brainchild of Ignacio Oreamuno, founder of ihaveanidea.org, is well positioned to make a dent in the industry if it works as well in reality as it sounds on paper. Ignacio’s idea is not crowdsourcing creativity, but a collaboration of up to 25 contributors, per project, who all get paid an equal amount once the work is completed. Hard to imagine that all writers, designer, etc. are spending an equal amount of time and everyone plays nice… but who knows.
Operation is based out of Montreal, Canada.

21
Jul
11

theidealists

By AdminAK Leave a Comment
Categories: advertising, creativity and design
Tags: , , , , ,

http://theidealists.com/
Their Service Description: Matching Ideas, Opportunities and Talent. We make matches; we don’t source crowds. Our community is invite-only. To compliment our basic matching service, we offer a full range of client services: This includes ‘curating’ matches that offer the best solution to your specific need.
Our Impression: Pretty fantastic. Part of the initial concept was to match non-produced ideas with clients looking for shortcuts to creativity, but that idea seems to have gone away, making room for straight forward match-making between a communication need and the talent to pull it off. Theidealists may seem like an ordinary agency which can’t afford to keep creatives on staff, but in theory, this young agencykiller, with its very diverse and top talent, can service projects much better than any traditional agency should be able to.

14
May
11

Voices

By AdminAK Leave a Comment
Categories: advertising
Tags: ,

http://www.voices.com/
Their Service Description: Voices is the industry leading website that connects businesses with professional voice talents. Radio and television stations, advertising agencies and Fortune 500 companies rely upon the Voices marketplace to search for, audition and hire voice talents. Voices has a global network of over 25,000 voice actors in over 100 languages. Over 69,662 MP3 voice-over demos are listened to by 1,159,901 unique visitors, creating 6911 job opportunities on average, each and every month.
Our Impression: Voices.com exists since 2003 and is no doubt a tremendous resource. But how come we haven’t seen a crowdsourcing alternative, since Voices is no more than a place where voice talent can be found, not unlike what Behance.com is for graphic designers. A critical mass of designers are ok with doing spec at sites like crowdspring and 99designs, so why wouldn’t voice talents be willing to do the same?

Operation is based out of London, UK.

08
May
11

Poptent

By AdminAK Leave a Comment
Categories: advertising, creativity, crowdsourcing advertising and crowdsourcing commercials
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http://www.poptent.net
Their Service Description: Poptent connects brand advertisers with talented videographers to produce low-cost, high-quality commercial videos for use online or for television.
Our Impression: Clients who are looking for a user-generated-type video or rudimentary animation, will be happy at Poptent. Running a brand promotion like “Help us create the next TV spot for your beloved brand” is a lot of work and doesn’t attract that many participants, since only a niche group of consumers sees itself as being capable. So if a brand manager’s main objective is to get his/her hands on a variety of interesting and non-polished commercials or virals, Poptent will probably deliver. They’ve completed over 160 assignments tapping into their 31,000 strong community of filmmakers, directors, animators, and actors.

Operation is based out of Wynnewood, PA and San Clemente, CA, USA

24
Apr
11

jovoto

By AdminAK Leave a Comment
Categories: advertising, creativity, crowdsourcing, crowdsourcing design, crowdsourcing directory, crowdsourcing ideas, crowdsourcing logo design and crowdsourcing sites
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http://www.jovoto.com
Their Service Description: 1. Provide fair, challenging opportunities for creative people, particularly those starting out, to earn money, learn, get their work seen and build their reputations. 2. Enable organizations to create better communications, products and services by taking advantage of technologies to access talent spread around the world.
Our Impression: Jovoto is more than crowdsourcing. It is also a collaboration platform to tap the crowd’s collective intelligence. Each new client has the option to customize the approach and team to best address their creative challenge. We see a lot of potential in jovoto’s model and hope its somewhat complex service profile isn’t overwhelming too many potential clients, who are just looking for a quick “ad agency alternative” experiment.
Operation is based out of Berlin, Germany with a small office in NYC.

24
Mar
11

Mypitch

By AdminAK Leave a Comment
Categories: advertising, creativity and crowdsourcing
Tags: ,

http://www.mypitch.com/
Their service description: Welcome to a world of ideas. Mypitch is a global tool and meeting place where ideas and inspiration are given free scope and made a reality. We are a leading provider in ‘creative crowdsourcing’ – our network of creative minds develops ideas for both local and global brands.
Our impression: With a recently improved site, Mypitch is well prepared to grow into a real agency killer. For the moment however, the services they promote are more based on traditional needs, like print ads, but that is not say that their 4000+ strong creative network isn’t able to tackle all kinds of projects. Mypitch claims to have worked through over 1000 pitches since their “doors opened” in 2008.
Operation is based out of Stockholm, Sweden

18
Mar
11

idea hunting

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Categories: advertising, creativity and crowdsourcing
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http://ideahunting.net
Their Service Description: Idea Hunting offers a set of services that enables brands and companies to get creative solutions for their brands and products in an easy, fast and safe way, using the creative skills of a huge creative global community.
Our Impression: Great potential. The management team has the credentials, the concept is unique and the site is beautifully simple. What hasn’t happened yet are traffic or business transactions. As of 3/9/11 they’ve had only four pitches. It’s unclear what the problem is, but maybe it’s just a hobby for the founders with little commitment or the credibility to operate out of Portugal is representing a hurdle.
Operation is based out of Lisbon, Portugal.

18
Mar
11

blurGROUP

By AdminAK 7 Comments
Categories: advertising, creativity, crowdsourcing and design
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http://www.blurgroup.com/
Blur Group is the world’s largest Creative Services Exchange.
Their Service Description: Our 9,500 creatives and exchange staff, our unique business model and advanced technology radically alter the marketing services space – delivering the most cost-effective, real time and relevant design, marketing, advertising, media and ideation services.
Our impression: A very ambitious organization with a very broad service offering positioned to make a real dent in the agency world. Quotes like “No more agency beauty parades, no more hefty retainers.” on their site are clearly trying to position blur as a valid, full-service alternative. Their single largest reward of $130,000 is no pocket change either, which proves that their reputation and credibility is growing.
Operation is based out of London, England.

08
Mar
11

zooppa

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Categories: advertising, creativity and crowdsourcing
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http://zooppa.com
people-powered brand energy
Their Service Description: Zooppa is the world largest source for user-generated advertising.
Our Impression: Advertising is a big word and by digging a bit deeper it becomes clear that zooppa focuses on commercial and video production. However their concept seems like an interesting one. The idea is to launch a fully user-generated campaign rather than just airing a video on local TV or online. The zoopa platform promises to promote the entire brand through its strong member base.
Unfortunately, this “spec” based concept produces a lot of creative waste product, just like crowspring and 99designs do in the design process.
Founded in Venice, Italy, now operated out of Seattle, US.

08
Mar
11

edge amsterdam

By AdminAK 1 Comment
Categories: advertising, creativity and crowdsourcing
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http://edge-amsterdam.com
Elite-sourcing creative network.
Their Service Description: Creative companies hire us to gain new and fresh insights and creative output which can serve as inspiration and can be used for further creative development.
Our Impression: If approached with an American mindset, the service offering and description seems a little confusing. Edge is open to any kind of creative challenge and with that comes the doubt that the product with be truly excellent. We like their site and collaboration with intl. art schools, but we suggest Edge should first get an elite writer to formulate a better service description for themselves. And since when have students been elite creatives? Innovative minds maybe, but it takes experience to deliver results.
Operation is based out of Amsterdam, Holland.

08
Mar
11

BootB

By AdminAK 1 Comment
Categories: advertising, creativity, crowdsourcing and design
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http://bootb.com
Unlimited Creativity by the word’s best creative department.
Service Description: 31,000 creators from around the world are providing an average of 200 creative solutions per brief.
Our Impression: BootB is a Europe-based giant and crowdsourcing pioneer. The model is build to provide the same results as ad agencies, but without the customer service and strategic guidance. All kinds of projects are welcome, ranging from TV commercials to logo designs.

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