3 Serious Benefits of Crowdsourcing Creative Work
by Pamela Ross
If you own a business without an internal creative team, your standard option has been an expensive agency with copywriters, art directors and strategists. They’re professionals and have executed campaigns before — but their perspective is necessarily limited. After missteps like Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner debacle, consumers asked, “How did this ever get approved?” Ad industry veterans knew why: because the agency model is yoked by old-fashioned structures, protocol, and leaders set in their ways. Or else, they’re too scared to talk clients out of bad ideas and risk losing them.
An increasingly popular alternative is crowdsourcing creative ideas, copy, or whatever’s needed. Write Label, for example, is powered by an engine of thousands of writers spanning the globe. If you’re hesitant to take the plunge, that’s reasonable. But to give you that extra push, I’ve outlined three major benefits business owners can enjoy by harnessing the power of crowdsourced creative.
- Diversity Of Voices
A model like Write Label’s works so well because it taps into a “brain bank” of people with varying voices, perspectives, and lived experiences, all of which inform their work. As long as agencies are largely staffed by white collar professionals and graduates of communications schools, certain perspectives will always be marginalized. Through crowdsourcing, you can access the variety of voices needed to resonate in a multicultural world and reach consumers belonging to underrepresented groups.
2. Cost-Effectiveness
As a business owner, no matter how passionate you are about the products or services you offer, the bottom line is never far from your mind. And in tumultuous economic times, how could it not be? Crowdsourced creative is less expensive, period — without compromising on the quality of results. Utilizing a “team” of vetted-yet-self-selected creatives can significantly reduce costs AND yield impressive work. Crowdsourcing is a nontraditional advertising solution whose cost-effectiveness alone makes it worth considering, especially for small business owners.
3. Shorter Timeline
As anyone who’s watched Mad Men can attest, it typically takes weeks or months for an ad campaign to be pitched. In contrast, mere hours could pass between pressing “send” on a brief with copy points and reviewing crowdsourced ideation, copy, design, etc. The creative component of ad campaigns is crucial, and crowdsourcing is a time-efficient and streamlined way to solicit creative work.
