First we had Threadless, a t-shirt company that prints solely on what their customers want to be seen wearing. They are heralded as being the first, and probably still the only, true web 2.0 company. They simply provide the web community structure and the printing of the t-shirts, whereas it's their customers that dictate what designs will be chosen to be printed. They don't even design in house; any designer in any country in the world can submit their design for the community to vote on.
Now we have Victors & Spoils, who are taking this model one step further and have sprouted up as an agency that functions purely on a crowdsourcing model. Anyone can pitch their ideas for a specific creative brief and the chosen pitch gets handsomely rewarded. I guess in layman's terms it's like an episode of The Apprentice where anyone can be hired, the client choses the finished product and anyone can get fired.
This new agency concept seems like an interesting idea, and apparently some clients are already waiting in the sidelines to be signed up, however this "open to all" creative process could introduce what companies fear might eventually happen to their brands. They still want perceived ownership, need an agency to take ownership and direction under one roof and would possibly be concerned that there would be too much supposed "outside critics" opinion on the interpretation of their brand. Victors & Spoils certainly have leaders at the agency's helm with ex-employees from CrispinPorter+Bogusky, so this probably comes as no surprise that this could be a ground breaking concept when you could potentially have your target demographic tell you how you should look. However it's always been a closed agency's role to lead the client onto the right path. Will opening it up to any and all just make brands more fearful that this trend could become nothing more than a public creative dissection?
No comments:
Post a Comment