It’s been a while since we’ve considered Crowdsourcing in this blog. This week saw the appointment of Jeff Howe, who coined the term and defined it, to crowdsourcing.org. Yesterday blur Group  presented to CMOs in the MENGonline network on how Crowdsourcing is helping to disrupt Madison Avenue with a new model for Creative Services.  It seemed a good time to revisit the topic, one of the core techniques supporting the Creative Services Exchange. Here’s some of what we discussed and the implications for the ad industry and for those who buy from that industry, the CMOs and their teams.

Crowdsourcing in itself isn’t disruptive. This is why CMOs of bluechips and heads of the major networked agencies see it as a flight of fancy rather than a serious business model. But as a technique to change the way a business works – that’s a different thing altogether.

In the past we’ve talked about different models, introducing the idea of expert sourcing.  It’s helped us redefine the original Crowdsourcing definition from :

“Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.” – Jeff Howe

to a definition specific to the Creative Services Industry:

“Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a retained agency and outsourcing it to a defined, large, expert group of professionals in the form of a managed call.”

This evolution of the definition, dare we say Crowdsourcing 2.0 – Creative Services, has profound implications for both agencies and brands. This is where disruption starts.

For the oligopoly of the big networks, it moves Crowdsourcing from a fun activity by enthusiastic amateurs that they can dismiss accordingly, into a viable alternative to their model. The idea that their major brands can now source equal quality creative work without the major players, –  after all many independent creatives are from the big networks, should make them sit up and take notice. Otherwise they may be found fiddling while Madison Avenue burns.

But for smaller agencies, let’s think of them of Davids to the likes of WPP’s Goliath, Crowdsourcing opens a whole new host of opportunities, which probably explains why more and more are embracing the model. They are no longer regionally limited or tied down to a small number of small clients. They can pitch for the same business that many bigger firms will be after. Crowdsourcing levels the playing field, or more accurately flattens the pitch. Now you can be rewarded for the quality of your work not just your name. It also means that they can use the Crowd to help out on those projects beyond their expertise so that they effectively become full service. So a small agency has the power to be full service: that’s not turning a home video into a Superbowl Ad. It’s disrupting the model.

What this definition removes us firmly from the world of speculative work and competitions. It’s great for the amateur but it’s not great for professional designers, whose work needs to be traded fairly. This new model gives them just that option as they are extending their reach, but without devaluing their offerings.

And as for brands? This week we talked about the enlightened CMO and the new trends driving this new-look marketer. Adage has described the tipping point for the Global CMO. With digitization and global feeding off each other, the new CMO has a global agenda, that even the biggest network may struggle to meet. This global agenda embraces a whole new set of requirements, but these requirements are also relevant to everyone with a marketing responsibility.

Crowdsourcing gives brands the chance to create global campaigns or deliver local programmes. It provides CMOs with more choice – not just in terms of creative options, but in terms of how they define their marketing requirements. It may seem a bit paradoxical, but using the crowd intelligently, actually means that control is returned to the CMO. No longer in an agency stranglehold, able to brief in the way they want, and with budgets that they set, for the campaigns and deliverables that they need. Holding on to their ideas and finding the right implementation partners – the best in breed approach that saw the start of the niche agency movement, but led ultimately to more expense and less success.

The remaining question for many businesses is how to safeguard their brand,  if it’s no longer in their traditional agency’s hands. But the traditional agencies aren’t always lifelong guardians. If the global CMO is going to succeed, they need to be the ones ensuring the brand’s safekeeping, its development, its promulgation. It is solely their responsibility; an agency should be directed by them.

Using the Creative Services Exchange, embodying the new Crowdsourcing, keeps the CMO closer to all the activity around their brand and returns control to them. Getting different people to implement according to that ownership, simply sees better choice and creativity – not the loss of that ownership.

The new Crowdsourcing is disrupting the traditional ad world, but that disruption has positive effectives for both creatives and businesses. Now is the time to take ownership and start using it for your brand. Just try it out - submit a brief.