Creating the Idea MachineAn agency response to crowdsourcing.

What it isopen, free-form, entrepreneurial, passionate

What it isn’tcontrolled, dictated, top-down

Idea machine

It’s not limited by “what we do,” because the walls of macro-specialization are falling. Now, we’re doing micro-specialization—a strategic focus on multiple, possibly unrelated specialties.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8617225@N02/532206721/

Who’sdoing it?

“Then we built Field Notes.

…it’s in a hundred stores and we sell hundreds of orders every day online.

…we wanted to have half of our revenue come from things that we owned, as opposed to work-for-hire.”

-Jim Coudal

From the excellent interview at Design Glut

Link: http://www.designglut.com/2009/08/jim-coudal-of-coudal-partners/

“We have this thing called Layer Tennis which is a live design event on Fridays. We actually created it way back in 2001 as a total goof.

Then we were dealing with Goodby out in San Francisco on some work for Adobe. They needed something to promote CS4. So we brought Layer Tennis back, and offered it as a sponsorship. In a way Adobe is our client, except rather than us selling our services to them, they’re sponsoring this thing we created.”

-Jim Coudal

Link: http://www.designglut.com/2009/08/jim-coudal-of-coudal-partners/

“…we realized that there was no interesting packaging available for CDs and DVDs. They were all crap, like the plastic boxes that you have at Blockbuster.

it was so hard for us to find a nice case, maybe other people were having this problem.

That was the beginning of Jewelboxing this really sweet system for doing a short run of DVD or CD packaging. We launched it, and we made 13 sales on the first day. We thought, “Maybe we’re on to something!” All of a sudden Jewelboxing became the big business.”

Link: http://www.designglut.com/2009/08/jim-coudal-of-coudal-partners/

“People always ask, “What is your greatest failure?” I always have the same answer – We’re working on it right now, it’s gonna be awesome!” -Jim Coudal

Link: http://www.designglut.com/2009/08/jim-coudal-of-coudal-partners/

Other Examples

They’ve been melting faces in the Mile-High design community, but they’re on this list for their nevercloud™ project.

If you’re don’t speak awesome, that logo is Cypher13.

Nerd-cred From nevercloud.com:

Nevercloud is a cloud hosted CMS with an ultra-light extensible framework promoting elasticity and infinite scalability.

Scale your projects infinitely and put the nevercloud’s robust application stack to work for you.

nevercloud™

a partnership betweenCypher13 and Quick Left

Of course it has nothing to do with “what they do” as a design boutique, but it fits in beautifully with who they are and their clients.

Well, to a certain extent. They’re still in the model of shock and awe advertising. But, lately they’ve been expanding and creating “stuff” that stretches the brand message beyond traditional advertising tactics. See Burger King Xbox game and King costumes as examples.

the Lightening Round

Famously home of the 20% program, where a fifth of your time can be spent on side projects. Since its inception Gmail, Google News, and AdSense have come out of the 20% program.

More

Because people, who are not you, are doing it.

And because agencies are generally filled with smart, creative people. Engage their entrepreneurial spirit, expand beyond “what you do.”

Own your creativity.

Why ?

We’re in unprecedented times where a thought can be broadcast around the world in seconds by anyone.

If you need another reason

Crowdsourcing500-pound Mad Men-eating lion in the room.

Say what you will, but these are not the crowdsourced ads we made fun of in 2007.

More people have access to express their creativity. No longer is the ability to produce quality video the sole domain of agencies. To quote Ad Age’s Bob Garfield, “Uh-oh.”

Links: http://tv.etsy.com/playlist/Handmade-Moment-Finalistshttp://adage.com/garfield/post?article_id=139144

The technology barrier is shrinking.

Agency Mea Culpa

Links: http://www.crowdspring.com/projects/graphic_design/logo/logo_for_brammo_electric_motorcycle http://thedenveregotist.com/article/4841/its-official-the-cp-b-interns-cant-design

Hard to turn a blind eye when we’re part of the group sending projects to crowdsourcing. After a small army of CP+B interns failed to produce a successful logo for Brammo, the agency used Crowdsourcing for the answer. What you see above is the winner.

Skills like design and writing are increasingly becoming commodities. What is going to separate agencies and show their worth are ideas.

Design & Writing no longer ruled by ad agencies.

Oh Shit.

You’re not just competing against other agencies any more. Read on.

Links: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2009/aug/25/unilever-peperami-advertising-crowdsourcinghttp://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=139306

Unilever drops Lowe after 16 years for crowdsourcing.

Links: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2009/aug/25/unilever-peperami-advertising-crowdsourcinghttp://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=139306

their (Lowe) great work has created a problem for them, because it makes Peperami the obvious candidate for crowdsourcing.”-Matt Burgess, Brand Manager

“…(we’re) confident taking our brief out to thousands rather than a small team of creatives will provide us with the best possible idea and take our advertising to the next level.-Noam Buchalter, Marketing Manager

“”

Read this. Twice.

Whatnow?

Create stuff that goes beyond traditional advertising to make life easier, better, or more entertaining. And, if someone is kind enough to engage in your idea, take them down the rabbit hole. If you leave them wanting for more then they’ll find something else.

The Switch

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/a7med_84/2085466103/

imim

Start your idea machine. See where it takes the agency.

Give people the freedom to experiment outside of their normal projects. You never know what they’ll come up with.

You Gotta Start

It won’t be pretty. You may need a jump start along the way, but…

Image credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paopix/2413495787/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/powerpig/3720720906/