Over the last 12-18 months blur Group has been quietly sowing the seeds of a Creative Services revolution. We’ve explained how Crowdsourcing is a technique that corporates can embrace and that creatives don’t need to fear as a loss of revenues, but rather the way to find high-value work that they’d otherwise never encounter.

We’ve shown how social media isn’t just a buzzword for bored marketers but a way to build a business.  And a platform that makes marketing happen faster and more effectively.

We’ve suggested that in an age of austerity, Creativity is more important than ever, at all points of a business.

We’ve been very gentle with traditional advertising agency networks, while undertaking an education process (social of course) with CMOs to show that this model might be ripe for not so much as a cosmetic overhaul as full surgery.

As always with companies operating fairly stealthily we’ve acquired a core base of early adopters who wanted to take advantage before the rest of the world cottoned on.

Now, we’re ready to unleash the full power of what we’ve been building:

The world’s largest Creative Services Exchange™.

Now it’s possible to trade Creative Services in the same way that you can trade oil, gold and company shares. Putting a value on every aspect of the creative development process. Ensuring that corporate brands have the widest options from a growing global Crowd of over 9,500 Creatives,  and the best returns on their marketing budgets. The Creative Services Exchange rewrites the rules of Madison Avenue.

As with all modern e-trading exchanges, blur Group focuses on the transactional.  This is about getting creative work briefed, pitched and sold. It’s cost-effective and delivery-focused. It’s about the buyer getting just what they want – they’re not trading friendly account directors, or funky reception chairs. They’re after creative work that builds their brand, their products and their business. Its Cloud-based technology ensures that it’s open to everyone, wherever they are, whatever time they’re working.

On the Creative Services Exchange, briefs are the business. The marketing decision-maker chooses how to relay their requirements, knowing that they’re not going to be persuaded that ‘what they really need is…’ Automating the process as much as possible, blur Group’s brief traders ensure that the best match is found between buyer and seller so that Creatives pitch for appropriate business, and marketers see the best. The price is fixed at the start and both parties adhere to this, with blur Group taking a commission on each brief traded.

With briefs traded daily, it’s a good way to measure the state of the creative services industry. The blur Group Index™ aggregates all the activity in each of the markets that make up the Exchange: design, marketing, media, artwork and innovation. It uses brief activity, value, creative response to deliver a regular insight into creative spend, media use and marketing practices of businesses across the globe. Starting on March 1st this index will be published weekly along with a brief trades sheet.