Interesting post on the tribbleagency, about the fucktards at Victors and Spoils, who claimed the other week that they were the first agency based on the lame brained idea of crowdsourcing. As I pointed out in a post last week, they are full of shit. A comment on the site by AdHack provides even more evidence. “And to make it more clear, a bunch of crowdsourcing startups also existing prior to Victors & Spoils. I know because I’m 1 of 3 people in an office doing it at AdHack (http://adhack.com). Another is Genius Rocket.” You see what these fucking douchenozzles seem incapable of realizing, is that now, thanks to the Internet, you can no longer lie and make shit up… There’s always someone out there who will expose you. The Goebbels theory of marketing “If you lie often enough, people will believe you.” no longer applies… Unless you’re a politician. Think Enfatico here!!!
The first agency planner was a fucking German!
I'm not one to self-promote *cough* but Cunning crowd sourced the entire agency brand and logo hundreds of years ago.
www.cunning.com, to see the results in the ID section. We print the logos and stick them on our business cards, letter heads etc.
It worked quite well.
I don't see why an agency can't have professionals and crowd-sourcing elements - best of both worlds no?
Posted by: Floyd | November 11, 2009 at 01:41 PM
They got a load of press due to questionable statements.. I would love to see adweak issue a retraction for just republishing a press release...
Posted by: The Founder | November 11, 2009 at 02:02 PM
Crowdsourcing is good for small enterprises who want logos for really cheap. That's essentially what Genius Rocket is. The place does not even have a single creative person on staff, so they are literally simply opening jobs and letting the client pick a winner. Creatives essentially are working for free, unless they win - at which point they receive an amount of money far less the standard freelancer rate.
Posted by: HoSourcing | November 11, 2009 at 02:03 PM
" I would love to see adweak issue a retraction for just republishing a press release..."
If they did that, they'd print nothing but retractions. It's worse now than ever. Seems like Ad Age is just as bad. The home page is mostly self-promotion passed off as "news" or "reporting." They even give them headlines to make them seem like actual events, then you click and it's just psychobabble from some no-name Planner. Enough already.
Posted by: JBjr | November 11, 2009 at 02:36 PM
Sorry George, but the first Planners...were Brits!
Posted by: CokeZeroWhore | November 11, 2009 at 02:45 PM
As far as I can tell, VS is the first crowdsourcing agency founded by the kind of people who in the past would have founded a creative boutique. In other words, their core guy, Evan Fry, is a creative director with serious pedigree (if you think Crispin is truly great and awards matter). Sadly, VS chose the lazy route in coming up with ways to describe itself, so now they just sound like a bunch of liars. Makes you wonder how hard they will really try for their potential clients.
Jeff Shattuck
www.cerebellumblues.com
Posted by: Jeff | November 11, 2009 at 03:13 PM
no one asked for it, but heres my take on crowdsourcing. if crowdsourcing means listening to the crowd and getting ideas, using your brain and theirs, fine. that is important. know your customers. know what is going on in the markets. know about trends. and so on. i call that research.
but using it as an agency model smells of outsourcing and cost cutting - in a way that people in the 'crowd' will not be rewarded for their work or will get an amount of money that will not pay the bills. sweatshop-like exploitation. i am looking forward to be proven wrong. (not kidding.)
Posted by: pseudo | November 11, 2009 at 03:18 PM
Fido is another crowdsourcing consultancy but, at least, they have some real clients
Posted by: adrefugee | November 11, 2009 at 04:24 PM
Boycott creative cloud sourcing now!!!
Posted by: Intellectual Property Theft | November 11, 2009 at 05:03 PM
If this is a new model for our industry, pack it up now because why would a client bother with an agency that writes a brief then outsources all the creative to amateurs? You've made yourself completely superfluous. The only asset not easily recreated by most clients is a Creative Department. Why give that away? Better to outsource Creative Direction than Creative.
Posted by: Lord Shmo | November 11, 2009 at 05:43 PM
"If they did that, they'd print nothing but retractions. It's worse now than ever."
could you picture that...
Page 1 - Sorry about the story on page 3 last week
Page 2 Sorry about the story on page 5 last week
....
Posted by: The Founder | November 11, 2009 at 06:03 PM
It's one thing if you're a small shop with margins and low profits. You need creative but don't have the budget. I get it.
It's another thing when you're a multi-million dollar company with worldwide presence and a brand that everyone knows trying to Crowdsource shit. Those type of clients i always refer to crapinabox.net
Posted by: brian™ | November 11, 2009 at 06:53 PM
Problem with crowd sourcing is it takes fucking ages to get anything back. And how do you deal with changes when your copywriter is working in a bar in Uppercumbucktoo West, with no mobile coverage? In a way this makes all the dead shit clients who demanded shit work look like they had a long term plan. Dumb down the work for twenty years then no one will notice when we get monkeys to write it for nothing. Brilliant!
Posted by: Vic Norman | November 12, 2009 at 02:16 AM
@ vic......
what do you have against monkeys....
it seems they run things already.
oh wait, i see what your saying.
a barrel of monkeys is bad.
seems we have that to....
everywhere.
Posted by: methinksdifferent | November 12, 2009 at 07:31 AM
First time I heard something like this was 30 years ago from a German emigré who told me that Speer was the art director, Goebbels was the copywriter, and Leni (can't spell her name) Reifenstahl was the production company.
It led to a little research into totalitarian typefaces as it seemed that Lenin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, and Mao's China all simplified their writing by edict. The Cyrillic stuff was cut apart, the German Gothic gave way to Bauhaus lightening, and China radically simplified the pictographs so that more of the doomed peasants could read the directives even as they couldn't compehend Mao's spoken Hunan dialect.
As for new agencies' PR, it is usually good for the morale of the owners and the employees, but rarely leads to business. Although in this era, who knows? Generally, it is better to tie PR to client success--as meager as it may be--than to pronouncements from the owners hwoever profound.
On the subject of (what do you call it? croud sourcing?), it is immoral, unethical, and possibly illegal to take work from people and not pay them...but sources tell me that it has been going on for a long time...embarrassingly as it happens at some of the biggest agencies often abusing receptionists, mail boys, and occasional bartenders. One would think that someone in this already ethically-challenged business (say the Pres of the 4A's) would speak up even in a soft voice and not leave it to me, Harry Von Zell, to speak from the grave.
Posted by: Harry Von Zell | November 12, 2009 at 08:36 AM
George, you adorably foul-mouthed Ewok you, looks like the good folks at Victors and Spoils had you in mind when they wrote this:
http://victorsandspoils.com/of-crows-and-prehistoric-tadpole-things-avoiding-the-consumption-of-one-helping-the-evolution-of-the-other/
Posted by: Steve Randall | November 12, 2009 at 01:32 PM
Well, here's a book about the Nazi CI:
http://www.typografie.de/Our-Books/Graphic-design/Andreas-Koop/NSCI::670.html
Posted by: The Cartoonist | November 12, 2009 at 03:05 PM
in case anyone missed it:
http://www.crowdspring.com/projects/graphic_design/logo/v_s_001_design_the_victors_spoils_logo/details
check out the tone of the feedback and note how much each of the five awarded got. if im not mistaken, it were 1120 entries. theres also a link to the contract.
Posted by: pseudo | November 12, 2009 at 03:47 PM
so if norbus56 was awarded $1000.00 what were the others given money for? that grand was the top prize, were the rest consolation prizes? what about the other 1115 entries?
so $2400.00 spent on 1120 attempts… roughly $2.14¢ each, at this rate, they're their own best client.
do they get to keep the rest and "repurpose"? nice way to start building a catalog of visual assets, can't wait till they start recycling graphics and layouts and get fan mail from some of the people that submitted work but didn't make the cut on various projects…
Posted by: the lower depths | November 12, 2009 at 04:19 PM
Fuck, "The Founder" is boring. His "agency". His posts. His constant Tribble drivel. OK, so he knows search. And that qualifies him to keep posting his smug, holier-than-thou shit. Geez, that guy must have a really teenie weenie.
Posted by: Founder's A Loser | November 12, 2009 at 05:19 PM
so where can your oh so wise words be found? i would like to read them and then say what a tiny little dick you got. just because i can.
Posted by: dellawhatever | November 12, 2009 at 06:07 PM
LOL!! Says the idiot using my name rather than his own...
How's print going for you these days? Doing well? Newspaper ads a growth industry for you?
Fucktard.
Posted by: The Founder | November 13, 2009 at 11:46 AM