Monday, August 31, 2009

The future of creativity


As we are all focused on Thinking Fresh about the future. I have noticed two recent businesses that are reinventing the value of creativity (as we traditionally deal with it in the marketing business).
A B&T article covered the launch creative-exchange.com which is a site where creative agencies can sell ideas, that their current clients didn't run, to others. Sort of like the Trading Post of creative ideas. I assume there would be a cost advantage to buying someone else's second hand ideas?

There are other things apart from ideas available, including research & music.
As it only launched today it will be interesting to see how big the market is for this type of service.

On the flip side, in the US clients are doing away with the creative agencies all together.

Unilever goes crowdsourcing to spice up Peperami's TV ads "Food giant drops ad agency Lowe after 16 years and puts up a $10,000 prize for creative marketing ideas".

Consumer created ads are nothing new. Doritos (who did it for $12.79) , Southwest Airlines, and Saucony are just a very few examples.

The interesting thing about Unilever's decision is their attitude.
  • They have broken a 16 year relationship: " Unilever said it has no plans to retain a full-time ad agency for the Peperami account in future."

  • And taken Lowe's idea with them: "the (winning) ad has to feature the cheeky Peperami character Animal, created by Lowe London."
The website http://www.ideabounty.com/ that consumers are to submit their Peperami work has cracked many other briefs, though mainly charity clients.

Both creative-exchange.com and http://www.ideabounty.com/ will no doubt open some debate on the ownership of ideas, as well as the value placed on creative ideas & relationships.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Adrants has a related post on this issue. check it out here:
http://www.adrants.com/2009/09/whos-up-for-some-crowdsourcing.php

Anonymous said...

Also, a bit closer to home, Australia Anthill as has an article on crowdsourcing. It looks at Oodles.com, who are using consumers to come up with their tagline.
Here's the link: http://anthillonline.com/in-search-of-a-tagline-oodlescom-offers-the-twittersphere-a-1000-prize/