People have been talking about a fi ght between old agency models and new ones for years, but so far it’s been all hype with little action. Digital shops haven’t knocked out full-service agencies, and social media boutiques are still just circling their digital predecessors. But the bell may ring very soon to signal a new round.
Today, most discussion about new agency models take as given that smaller is better. Clients want faster, cheaper creative solutions and the response has been a surge in leaner shops with few full-time staff and an army of freelancers hired on a client-by-client basis. Toronto’s Zulu Alpha Kilo launched this way in 2008, Slingshot did the same in Vancouver last month and a bunch of others opened for business in between. Crowdsourcing agencies, however, are simultaneously the epitome and extreme opposite of this concept. They too cut back on costs with freelance-led, modular creative teams —a loose network of sometimes many creatives who work on projects on an informal and as-needed basis. Rather than bill themselves as small and nimble, they bill themselves as huuuuuge and nimble.
Toronto agency Cloud was testing this concept throughout 2009 and launched as a hub for a global community of creatives led by Peter Coish, founder of XY Media Ventures. With no central bricks-and-mortar offi ce, all of Cloud’s client interactions are handled virtually by key staff who then manage a roster of freelancers online. Six months after Cloud’s offi cial debut, Ignacio Oreamuno, the co-founder of popular online hub IHave- AnIdea.org, launched another crowdsourcing creative shop called Giant Hydra. For now, both Giant Hydra and Cloud are playing nice with traditional agencies. While Cloud started as an independent business, it formed a partnership with The Hive in January 2010, in effect becoming its digital division. Giant Hydra has only worked directly with one client globally (in the Netherlands) and never with Canadian advertisers.
It sells itself to creative directors as a subcontracted idea resource, and has been hired by B OS, Taxi and Blammo among others. “When I was looking for investors, one of them said ‘If you go straight to clients, you’re going to start a war,” said Oreamuno, a former art director at Ogilvy Toronto. “When I talk to agencies, I either hear ‘I love this’ or ‘Holy shit, you’re going to get me fi red. I hate you.’” Oreamuno said for every creative director who doesn’t want to tell their client about hiring Giant Hydra, there’s another who shows them off as a tactical advantage, so clients are slowly becoming aware of their crowdsourcing options.
So where’s the fi ght? Why aren’t these businesses going toe-to-toe with traditional shops as stand-alone entities? Perhaps they think clients won’t accept such a perceived gimmicky concept as a crowdsourcing ad shop. But it’s only a matter of time before clients hear about Victors & Spoils, which, like Cloud and Giant Hydra, has only a few full-timers in its Boulder, Colo. offi ce and uses more than 5,000 strategists, writers, artists and designers connected
online. V&S works directly with national advertisers. It won Harley Davidson after the motorcycle superbrand ended a 31-year relationship with AOR Carmichael Lynch in 2010, earning V&S a spot on Ad Age’s “Ten To Watch” list of groundbreaking agencies. It’s now about to launch work for Levi’s, Gap, Dish Network and Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.
“We can be really fast and provide a lot more variety,” said John Winsor, Victor & Spoils’ CEO, recalling an agency pitch conducted by a major cereal brand for an upcoming campaign. “They pitted us against Saatchi, their agency of record. [Saatchi] had four creative directors work on a brand campaign for two months, got two campaign ideas and eight ideas total. According to the client, the agency charged them US$1.8 million. We had two weeks less to work on the brief, had 1,000 people globally [working on it]—20 pros then locked down on the assignment and another 980 throwing down ideas. We came to the presentation with nine brand campaign ideas and 110 ideas total.
“Four of our ideas went to testing and one of Saatchi’s went in. One of our ideas won. We charged the client US$195,000.” Winsor believes there’s no reason this model won’t work in Canada.“It’s the future. You’ll see every agency use this model. Those thousand-person agencies are going to be 75 really senior people in fi ve years, no matter if they’re in Canada, Sri Lanka or the U.S. There are going to be global networks of creatives and strategists that are easy to tap into.” While Hydra and Cloud may not be lacing up their gloves just yet, with those kind of effi ciencies leading crowdsourcing’s charge in the U.S., Canadians are bound to get curious. There will soon come a time when Canada’s crowdsource businesses will have to come out swinging, or forever wonder if they only could have been a contender.
