Crowdsourcing agencies didn’t seem at all flummoxed when former Crispin guys John Winsor and Evan Fry and Massive founder Claudia Batten announced that they’d launched the “The world’s first creative (ad) agency built on crowdsourcing principles.” Probably because they all do different things, and being “first” isn’t important, unless you’re America and the year is 1969.
But various commenters and blogs have bemoaned the agency’s “first” claim. Naturally, we’re hopping on board to list a bit of what we know. First, a short list of companies operating on the crowdsourcing model:
— GeniusRocket: “Launch your creative project. Review tons of great submissions. Choose your favorites.”
— Adhack: “AdHack is an open marketplace for ad creative. We connect Ad Buyers with Ad Creators and help them both win.”
— open src advertising: “A place to acquire everything from inspiration to fully baked advertising campaigns that provide real business solutions to client problems.”
— Crowdspring: “Post a creative project. Watch the world contribute ideas. Choose the one you like.”
— 99 Designs: “We help you run a ‘design contest’, where thousands of designers compete to create the best possible design to meet your needs.”
— Eyeka: “Filmmakers, photographers, animators, graphic designers, register for free on Eyeka, share your creations and participate in video contests and photo contests launched by Brands to win prizes and be recognized!”
— TopCoder: Crowdsourcing since 2003.
Some of these are more Web centers/platforms than “shops”, but nonetheless it’s clear that crowdsourcing already exists as a business model accessible by advertising professionals. Mediabistro, parent of AgencySpy, even has its own sort-of-crowdsourcy tool called Freelance connect. It’s nothing like an agency but uses the Web to connect freelancers to various projects. So yes, there are others, and no, V&S isn’t the first crowdsourcing company. Again, who cares?
An interesting note: we asked our (almost) 10k followers on Twitter to “name a crowdsourcing agency” and the majority responses we got pointed to Victors & Spoils. The one exception came from @purplesime who said “That sounds like any agency with no backbone to its producers and account teams. I could name several.”
Anyway, the propensity for “V&S” responses could be due to their recent popularity or because folks generally aren’t aware of Adhack, Genius Rocket et al. And in that case, V&S is inadvertently raising those companies’ profiles, and the field’s in general. That’s enough of that.
Note: If we missed a crowdsourcing company/agency, please let us know ad we’ll update. Email agencyspy at mediabistro dot com.