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What’s New in Creative Crowdsourcing?

By Blog, News

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Agencies and Brands: We have recently published a new, updated eBook you might find to be useful as you puzzle over how to keep up with work load, flex with demand and engage a deep pool of creative talent.

Click here to download the eBook and learn how to:

  • Scale your creative resources without sacrificing quality.
  • Flex with workload and new business efforts without adding FTE’s.
  • Tap into Boom’s vetted, NDA’d creative network to generate ideas for pitches and campaigns.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us. Share your challenges with us. Boom may be the the most unexpected way to meet your needs.

Let us know. We can help.
swood@boomideanet.com816.541.2600

5 Teams. 85 Ideas. Pharma Account Won. Boom.

By Marketing Proof, News

Firm Wins Pharma Account With Boom On The Team.

For a time, a New York Consultancy specializing in the health and pharma field turned to a narrow pool of freelancers to address creative needs. Beginning in 2016, the firm has relied on Boom to provide boundless creative resources – from concept through production, in both B2B and B2C marketing communications.
Read More

How To Avoid Falling Victim To Sameness And Stale Marketing

By News

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It’s likely that Mr. Tom Nowak of BestBuy, is presenting some invigorating ideas for stimulating creativity among in-house teams at the AdAge Brand Summit, Chicago, May 5, 2016. He certainly justified in reinforcing the importance of  “staying true to brand values.” It’s tricky for even highly familiar teams to meet that standard. But there can be a price to be paid in doing so: routinized thinking. Or as described in the agenda, “Sameness and Stale Marketing.” These are real issues. With some traditional and some not so traditional ways to address them.

It does makes sense for agencies (in-house or independent) to staff a creative department. Not just because that’s “the way we’ve always done it;” but because there’s a learning curve on a client’s business. Full-time creative teams earn the advantage of learning the brand personality, corporate mandatories and preferences, as well as audience mindsets and behaviors and category issues. That’s what it means to “stay true.”

However there are risks — when staying true also puts teams in a rut:

  1. One risk is that there is always the challenge to stay fresh, to side-step routine thinking. There is a tendency to narrow the boundaries or rehash old territory when the brand calendar cycles around to the same promotion or media strategy year after year.
  2. A second is that the left-field thinking that often comes from “newbies” — even while going out of brand bounds — can indeed lead to unexpected and positive outcomes.
  3. A third might just be that many agencies, especially in the current employment climate, simply tend to overload their creative staff; too many late nights, too many weekends — just when a new business pitch shows up and all hands are needed on deck.

The comfort-zone answer in these cases tends to be to bring in freelancers. Most CDs have a few go-to free agents he or she counts on to step in and save the day. But what if those folks are booked? What if they don’t have experience in the category or the channel required for this RFP? What if what you really need is a volume of thinking, more than one or two freelancers can generate?

There is an entirely novel option:

  • What if the creative department leadership could call on a vetted network of disciplined creative talent who can step in almost instantly with background in a channel or experience in a category? You’d have a ready pool of specialists to bridge the gap as needed.
  • What if you could call on experience in digital? Direct mail? Campaign concepts? You’d have an abundance of thinking that by its nature pushes the boundaries, explores new avenues of thought, reveals new ways of unraveling old problems.
  • What if the ECD could tap a dynamic network of creatives capable of honoring brand guidelines, respecting a brief. YOu’d have a resource that could turn around original ideas in short order?
  • What if you could engage this creative talent confidentially? You’d have an expansive pool of thinking without going public with your activity; ideal for pitches and campaign development.

This is not about user-generated content or ideas (ala Doritos Crash The SuperBowl). This is not about multitudes of hand-raisers who’ll do almost anything once — for $5. This is about a connected, distributed, vetted network of NDA’d creative experience. At your fingertips. It’s a way to bolster your creative resources and generate original ideas not just on demand, but on brand. More conveniently than wrangling freelancers. More affordably than one might think.

It’s not crowdsourcing. It’s ideasourcing. It’s about as far as agencies can get from stilted, stale sameness.

Want to know about the varieties of creative crowdsourcing and how Boom Ideanet is different? Find out more when you download our free eBook here: http://boomideanet.com/transformation/

No obligation! And no drip email follow-up campaigns. (Another novelty of Boom.)

How Agencies & Brands Can Tap The Sharing Economy Without Sharing Plans In The Process

By News

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

More and more categories of work are being addressed in crowd-based platforms, here in the “maturing” days (to borrow from Jeremiah Owyang) of the sharing or gig economy. The willingness of free agents makes it possible. Digital connectivity makes it practical.

Platforms are proliferating. What began as easily parseable tasks, such as coding and data entry, has now moved up the complexity spectrum to include creative challenges: design, video, campaign concepts and more.

However, most platforms are open to public view and merely request a social media account to log in. That may be fine on some projects. But how many brands or agencies want to open their books on crucial marketing strategies and executions? Who wants to expose those plans not only to anybody with a Facebook account, but to every competitor out there?

Doritos might – ala The Crash The Super Bowl Contest. But most marketers would prefer to keep plans confidential until launched. At the same time, gaining access to the deep creative resources of a crowd is inviting.

Finally: Firepower With A Firewall.

Fortunately, there is a creative crowdsourcing platform that offers both the creative energy teams need and the confidentiality they want: Boom Ideanet.

  • Boom offers clients creativity AND confidentiality.
  • All members of Boom have signed non-disclosure agreements.
  • They’ve shared examples of their work and identified brand and channel experience.
  • They know how to honor brand guidelines and respect mandatories.

So marketers can tap the idle creativity capacity of a crowd, without exposing product launches or unveiling campaigns — until the time is right.

The approach is perfect for meeting peak demand when the creative team is loaded up or the team just needs an abundant supply of fresh thinking.

On the QT.

Learn more here. Also download free eBook.

How The Creative Department Of The Future Saves Time & Money Now: Three Examples.

By News

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Over the first four years of Boom’s existence many of challenges revolved around the conception and production of broadcast advertising. Today, more and more brands and agencies are waking up to the deep creative capacity available through Boom for campaign concepts. It’s an expectedly easy way to handle the ebb and flow of work load without staffing up or sacrificing quality. Boom offers an approach that pleases CFOs and satisfies ECDs. No easy task! Here are three examples:

East Coast Agency – New Business Pitch

An agency engaged Boom to help develop creative for a new business pitch in the specialized pharma category. The firm often handles peaks in demand via freelance. But it can be a challenge to identify freelancers with the right experience, either in a category or a channel — as well as a challenge to procure more than a few ideas for review. In just six days, Boom generated more than three dozen concepts. The client was rewarded with a volume of expansive, original thinking that also honored the narrow boundaries of the brief. The agency fine-tuned six of those ideas to present to its client. Boom offered them a no hassle, disciplined creative scenario that worked fast and affordably.

Chicago Ad Agency – Working with Agency Planner & Creative Director

Boom can literally serve as an agency’s creative department. We just generated a wealth of campaign thinking for a financial services brand, under the creative direction of a Chicago shop. The planner & creative director handed off the base brief, including target audience research and brand guidelines. Boom generated a first round of loose campaign concepts. The agency reviewed the ideas just as they would have had the work been produced in-house. With additional input, we went back to assigned teams with over-arching themes, and further input to develop campaign concepts. The agency used those Boom concepts to prepare its own final presentation. You can learn more about this project here.

New York Marketing Consultancy – Working as Creative Department

A marketing firm in up-state New York generally works with a set of creative freelancers, but chose to engage Boom for fresh thinking. We collaborated on a brief, assigned the challenge to five Boom Ideanet members who each delivered “adcepts.” These rough ideas were shared with their client. They chose favorites, shared input; finalists were refined, reviewed again and a “winning” idea was chosen. We then worked with the consultancy to bring the “adcepts” into alignment with branding. It’s a novel approach that still delivers the kind of quality thinking brands expect from more traditional agency models. Find out more here.

SUBMIT: Why Crowdsourcing Invites Controversy. ENTER The Alternative.

By News

New_Submit_Button sLanguage matters. Words have meaning.

Consider the creative crowdsourcing world. Talented people conceive a campaign concept,  produce a video, conjure up a name or slogan, or design a logo; load their creation — their intellectual property — into a web application; then press that little SUBMIT button and wait for the payout.

Seems harmless enough. But is it?

In fact, that button is far from harmless. The term “submit” may be a rather innocuous verb, but it literally does signal submission. Creators by the thousands submit themselves to the rules and stipulations and the will of platforms and clients. Often without any compensation whatsoever. In almost every crowdsourcing platform, the crowd member is a submitter. Should they choose to read the fine print, they’ll typically discover language like this:

“The Member agrees and acknowledges that all title, interest, and rights to the Works submitted for the applicable project shall be assigned in full to the Sponsor of the Project.” – Other crowdsourcing platform

Not cool. And in many cases, they’ve already been expected to supply ideas that could shape an entire business!

At Boom Ideanet – in our quest to operate an ethical crowdsourcing platform – the crowd member retains his or her intellectual property until purchased by the client or, to use the euphemistic legal term above, sponsor.

It’s part of our zeal to give the client an advantage over traditional models without taking advantage of the creator. You know, the talented, inspired, hard-working human beings who are contributing their work. That’s why we are careful about the terms we use. Enter rather than submit. Entry rather than submission. Contributor rather than submitter.

Boom shows respect from the outset:

“Entry of your ideas constitutes your agreement with these terms of entry. You will retain intellectual property rights to any ideas you suggest … unless you win.”Boom

Yes, there is competition in the Boom model. There are winners. And even losers. But we insist that the model seek a balance between competition and compensation. Otherwise, the crowd-driven platform is just a churn model that uses up talent and creates trash piles of intellectual property that benefit no one, least of all the creator! Long term, nobody wins in that scenario. Not even the sponsor.

We recognize that creative people are contributing their ideas and their thinking. But we believe they need not sign over all their rights to that idea in the simple act of clicking a button.

We accept that there will continue to be controversy around crowdsourcing. But if we start to care about even little matters like the language employed in these models, we may begin to establish sustainable crowdsourcing models that benefit all parties, including the creators.

Boom.

The NFL Draws A Different Kind Of Crowd

By News

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“Goodell said the competitions received more than 1,000 total submissions. Not all of the ideas were brilliant, though that was sort of the point. ‘Out of what we think might be crazy, you might find a gold mine [for safety],’ he said.”

That remark was made by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, regarding the league’s exercise in crowdsourcing solutions to the concussion problem. They just declared the winners of its second “Head Health Challenge,” in an “open contest for devices or ideas that can make the game safer. The program, a joint effort among the NFL, Under Armour and General Electric, produced three winners.” (Quotes from the December 3, 2015, issue of The Wall Street Journal.)

So … even the stodgy old NFL is doing things a new way!

His position is exactly one that ad agencies, brands, and start-ups can take as well. Shake things up. Break through routine approaches and engage Boom Ideanet for a wealth of original thinking around marketing challenges.

Your “gold mine” idea could come from the most unexpected place. Boom is here to help you find it.

If you want to put some heads together, ping us. Brainstorm with our idea directors about any marketing challenge. First hour is free.

Boom Ideanet Hosts Happy Hour with Faris Yakob

By News

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Faris Yakob is co-founder of itinerant innovation and strategy consultancy Genius Steals. He and his partner Rosie have been living on the road for 100+ weeks (and counting), helping brands use creativity to solve business problems. They’ve traveled to more than 43 countries, working with iconic brands like Marriott, Coca Cola, P&G, and Gibson Guitars, amongst others.

Faris joined Boom Ideanet on November 10th to share thought-provoking observations captured in his recently published book, Paid Attention. Faris explored how ideas move people and how advertising can and should change in response to changes in the communications landscape.

Sample his captivating style in a video here: https://vimeo.com/61065910

Of course, if you’d like some captivating, original ideas to address one of those challenges that keeps you awake at night, contact Boom.
We’re on it.

Back To School On Content @CMOCollective

By News

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Big Data, Metrics & Analytics may be the most popular subjects in the hard knocks school of marketing right now. But CONTENT is still the topic putting many CMOs to the test. September 9 through 11, Boom participated in the “Back To School” Conference in Austin, TX, put on by The Digital Collective, Chicago. As might be expected, attendees were exposed to pleasing numbers, revealing graphs and illuminating pie charts. But content proved to be the source of, well, discontent.

Lesson One: In spite of all the buzz and purported experts, most brands are just fending for themselves when it comes to content. Many are daring to dive in and work through the how-to’s via trial and error. Some are standing eagerly on the sidelines, awaiting that moment when it all becomes clear or the imperative too pressing. Whatever the current stance, the executives responsible for figuring out this content “thing” are asking a lot of questions!

  • What constitutes content?
  • What content is meaningful to my customers?
  • Who creates content?
  • How does a brand brand content?
  • Where does content strategy come from?
  • How is content distributed?
  • If I host it on my own web properties, how do I drive traffic to my content?
  • How do I staff to handle content?
  • How do I go outside for content?
  • How do I budget for content creation, distribution, tracking?
  • How do I track interaction and engagement and, daresay, conversion?
  • Who’s doing content right?
  • How do they know if and when a content strategy is successful?
  • And perhaps one of the most challenging questions of all (addressed by Bryan Jones, VP North America & Commercial Marketing, Dell): Am I willing to invest in content when 80% of it may have everything to do with relationship-building and connecting personally, while only 20% has to do with selling!?

Lesson Two:  One hurdle is that the term “content” itself may be too unwieldy. Almost every conceivable kind of marketing communication has been tossed into the content bucket; from old-fashioned tv spots to text-links. That doesn’t make things any easier. Even for brands who’ve chosen to focus on one area versus another, it’s safe to say the trade is still in the pioneering days of content creation, distribution and evaluation.

Lesson Three: The carrot of measureability is being held out before us in the age of big data. The fact that content is such a conundrum is evidence enough that we still don’t know how to do it. We don’t yet know how to leverage the data we already have, learn from it and then apply that knowledge in ways that have utility for the customer and drive value for the brand. The brands who are succeeding have struck the “relevance” chord. Some are acting on the “fail fast” principle, operating on the promise that one day they’ll discover what works.

Lesson Four: There is evidence that brands are successfully “doing content.” Consider Whole Foods Market. Attendees enjoyed a Q&A with Digital Activation Leader, Nicole Lindstrom and their content partner OneSpot. Her content strategy goes beyond recipes to blog posts and guides to culinary topics and information that validates brand values, as well as the values of its passionate core customer. Their “north start” is personalization — which is likely the secret ingredient in a successful content strategy for almost any brand. After all, what is all this data for if it doesn’t ultimately lead to targeted, branded content that is meaningful to each customer?

Lesson Five: @CMOCollective indeed featured inspiring teachers:

  • Julian Aldridge, VP, Brand Evangelism & Activation, Schwab, roused our courage to create marketing with a venture capital mindset. (#killfear)
  • Bryan Jones, of Dell, illuminated us about the principles of “social selling.”
  • Philip Rather, Head of Partnership, Facebook, drove home the age-old direct marketing mantra of “right person, right message, right time,” but stirred the group with surprisingly convincing data about how FB delivers on that rubric in the new-world.
  • Stephen Webster, VP, Global Brand & Design, Mary Kay Global, shared how to be “nimble control freaks” to help a brand stay consistent, while also being adaptable enough to stay relevant to cultures and customers around the world.

Lesson Six:  Don’t give up hope. The CMO Collective introduced us to three Austin-based companies focused on addressing “content” questions like those above: Invodo, Spredfast and Umbel. Tony Weber of Time, Inc. hosted the conversation.

As for technology, Techstars offered up four start-ups who are wrangling new tools, data and metrics to shape marketing and customer experiences in the digital age: Experiment Engine, FashionMetric, MetricStory and Written.

Our Test: Here at Boom, we are applying what we learned.  Our lesson plan is to explore new and efficient ways to harness our vetted crowd’s energy to produce relevant, branded content on-demand. Stay tuned for contentment. Boom.

Freelance Talent? Take Five Tips from AdAge. Or One Tip from Boom.

By News

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BOOM. THINK OF US AS BOUNDLESS IDEA ENERGY.

AdAge just published a fine article that recognizes the growing reliance, among ad agencies, on freelancers “Best Practices For Managing Freelance Talent.”

The opening statement describes precisely the environment in which Boom Ideanet was founded in 2011: “A succession of economic downturns, long-term marketer budget cuts and a new generation with a different workstyle has ushered in a heyday for freelancers at ad agencies.” Boom is not a one-to-one freelancer work model, but we do provide opportunities for freelancers and offer creative bandwidth for agencies.

We are indeed operating in an ad world that represents growing opportunities for freelancers matched by growing challenges for agencies. And the reverse.

How does a creative manager find productive, experienced  freelancers? If you’re lucky you know a freelancer(s) and he, she or they are available. Or you engage a temp service. Or a contractor staffing firm. Or you venture into something like Behance. Or, more often than you care to, you just ask someone on staff to work a little longer, a little harder.

How does a talented creative find productive, talent-worthy challenges? Don’t most creative freelancers live with the mantra-like question, “Where will my next project come from?”

Boom Ideanet offers one best practice to both sides of the equation. Our model hosts vetted, experienced, NDA’d creatives, with idea energy available on a project basis. And we host legitimate creative opportunities, available when time and interest allows. Check out our Work or Services pages for examples.

So take five and apply one best practice: Engage Boom Ideanet.