Future agency?
By Hugh Jordan. Cracking crowdsourcing. From the mass of UGC contests and outsourcing sites, Victors & Spoils has emerged as the first creative agency to be fully reliant on crowdsourcing. It was, perhaps, inevitable, but the development is the first major departure from the traditional agency model in years.
So, could this be the future? “We really believe there is a seismic shift happening in advertising,” says Claudia Batten, co-founder of V&S. “New media is still so disparate at most agencies. Any campaign should be able to be extended across new and traditional media. Crowdsourcing is an effective way to do that… it’s the next evolution of the advertising industry.”
Batten has a habit of getting such calls right.
Back when brands were throwing their hands up at how to reach young males, she founded Massive, a company whose software created unique advertising opportunities in video games. Batten went on to sell the company to Microsoft for a tidy sum and now, along with John Winsor and Evan Fry – both formerly of Crispin, Porter and Bogusky – she has turned her talents to crowdsourcing.
“So far crowdsourcing has been cute and some interesting stuff has come out of it, but it hasn’t really been cracked open,” Batten explains. “Some people are very negative about the whole thing. We know crowdsourcing has a long way to go. The important thing for us is to listen to what people have to say and learn from it.”
The agency’s first move has been to crowdsource its own logo – a nice piece of PR but also a necessary talent-spotting exercise. V&S intends to implement a tiered system, rewarding stand-out members of the crowd with positions in its very own, virtual ‘creative department’.
And Batten is quick to point out that it is not just competition winners who will be rewarded with places.
“The name says it all – Victors and Spoils, plural,” she says. “Like any agency, we need a range of talents and personalities to create a successful campaign. We’ll be looking at who is instigating ideas, who is guiding and mentoring others by offering advice… who is really keen to take part.”
Plenty of criteria?
“Plenty of opportunity,” Batten corrects.
A subtle difference, but it could be an important one.
One issue facing V&S is that, as an agency, it will be seeking to build long-term relationships with clients rather than rely on one-off competitions. To do that it will have to keep a tight rein on the boundless creativity of its crowd as clients demand consistency – consistency over different media platforms and over many years. Too much opportunity could be a bad thing.
“The key will be how we go about tapping our creatives,” says Batten. “What traditional agencies are very good at is talking to clients and working out what it is they looking for, as clients are often not sure themselves. Once we have done that, we need to make sure our briefs are really tight and really well defined so that the crowd knows what they are aiming for.”
As we spoke, Batten witnessed a creative, online, adding a clever twist to another creative’s logo design.
“Standing on the shoulders of giants,” she remarked, referring to the process of idea generation, but the expression could equally be applied to the way Batten, Winsor and Fry have built on what has gone before them. And with the talent V&S has at the helm, standing on the shoulders of giants might just be where the agency finds itself in a couple of years.
