Saturday, April 30, 2011

Where do all the bad ideas go?

With the potential of producing massive amounts of ideas for virtually every type of human endeavor, what can we do with those solutions that just don’t work. The good stuff is the tip of the iceberg. The less useful stuff ( I will never dis the crowd, because… it’s a crowd!) or the “guano” ( what a cool word for bird feces!) must still be useful somehow. Re-cylced as it were.

We need to build an aggregating device that can find meaningful connections within all the missteps. I’m half serious about that last thought. I'll work on getting fully serious at some point.

The original image bank crowdsourced for their content with varying degrees of editing. You don’t need to be a professional illustrator to get your work into an image bank. And why not. Server size and bandwidth are not as much of an issue today. Of course not many will buy some badly rendered clip art, but getting it posted in the first place brings satisfaction to the creator. It’s all good, sort of. And even one sale puts money in the both pockets - creator and seller. The neat thing for the seller or content provider is that these tiny incremental sales for even average work may still add up to a substantial number. The crowds make it so.


It’s the age of self-syndication. I syndicate, therefore I am ( an artist, or something like that…)

When the crowd speaks who listens?

One day I’d like to compile the comments from anonymous readers of any major news article. It’s a microcosm of the world in terms of the extremes in thinking. But the lunatic fringe is over represented it seems. Or at least I hope it is. It’s a fascinating cross-section of hate, bile, ignorance and occasionally, genius.

Crowds votes for the best solution?

Not sure that ever works. And there are those who game the system too. Duping friends and acquaintances into participating in the vote. Genuine, lucid comments are rare as is unbiased voting. ( I base this on just a few contests I've been following, so it's a broad generalization, but it's also part of the way we are wired: support your friends even if they stink a little.)

Who actually reads the brief?

Even within a traditional agency structure the creatives are encouraged to read the brief dozens, if not hundreds of times. Read and re-read. The solution is in there somewhere, but only if it’s a good brief. Judging by the comments from the crowd, it’s astonishing how many individuals have not thoroughly read the brief. Or simply do not understand it.

Global briefs, local talent?

Communication / advertising design is inherently driven by culture and language. Big ideas are media and language neutral, but to begin a real dialogue with the consumer the execution of the idea needs local interpretation of language and image. “Google translate” does not really help here.

Gödel or google?

They both like math. What has this to do with crowds? It's all about numbers and networking in the end. For both sides. The crowd and the ones who harvests the output. The more contests a single creator gets involved in the better the odds of a payout. That's obvious. But the tendency for some, is just to focus on the competitions they have a background in, if the community is open, it is just as satisfying to participate less familiar territory. For example, I've engaged a friend of mine who's a natural when it comes to construction and material sourcing to participate in the $300 dollar house project (see post). The crowd can network for those who have expertise in a particular field, then join forces to participate in that contest. Like 1bigbrain!

The democratization of everything

How cool is that? There are problems of course. There needs to be some protection for the crowdsourced workers. Check out this podcast ( by David Alan Grier: A bill of Rights) for a good overview on the rights of the CS community http://bit.ly/jYGHzk from the http://dailycrowdsource.com


Friday, April 29, 2011

For the next generation of creatives and the current one.

Where can you find juicy multi-national, creative briefs from global brands?

A hot shop? Sure. Get your book together and try and get a job in one. No luck? Hit up the crowdsouring communities. If you’re persistent and talented you’ll at least get to work on some cool briefs, build your portfolio and even take home some big prize money.

For the more "mature" creatives who run their own careers ( read: freelance, out-sourced, downsized out or fired) it's a chance to stay current and mix it up with some emerging talent.

To Curate or not to curate.

Crowds can run wild when unchecked. They don’t necessarily generate the best solutions that way for either wacky or serious creative briefs. The Client Critique however can be painfully unhelpful. This is when seasoned creative professionals really miss the suits. I do like the “gated” community, where only professionals are allowed in after a portfolio review. I don’t like them if they don’t let me in though. (I’ve been let in so far, just so you know).

In the middle of the wild and woolly crowd is where the action is. With only professionals playing the game tends to be the same. A good brief will yield only a handful of truly remarkable solutions with a lot of repetition and similarities. In a mixed crowd you’ll likely see a wider range of thinking, with a lot of “missteps”; ideas way off brief, or not fully hatched.

The more you fiddle with the crowdsource agency and filter it’s output (from the crowd to the client) the more it starts to look like a traditional shop, except for the size of the creative department. Is this the right direction?

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

I like to buy winning lottery tickets.

And I really enjoy creating viral videos. This is a rant against the idea that you can create a "viral video". A minor, semantic point, but it's annoying to me. Clients are starting to ask for them. If you want a video to GO viral, then make sure your client is prepared to travel to the extreme edges of their brand landscape. Or just tell a story well, with a relevant plot twist. Then promote the crap out of it. In others words, come up with a big idea.

CSourcing for product/service ad vids produces a wild range of solutions. Most of which are wildly crappy. But that's not a bad thing and it's to be expected. Telling stories with video is hard work. Professionals have trouble with it. Of course there will be professionals in the crowd too. (More on this later) Watching the work of novices, amateurs and hobbyists is fascinating. There is talent in everyone, but not always for the thing they're actually doing: "great video, dude, but wouldn't you rather be a chef?"