With a new moon and a new month approaching, I would like to give some thought into slightly weaving my love for fashion and great music into this business development blog. The images in each blog post do not correlate with typical business blogs (no facts, figures, numbers, charts, bald guy pulling his hair out), and so I’m sure readers understand the use of metaphor and plain, old pretty pictures that accompany each post. And so, why not add a bit more excitement to the posts?
With that being said, let’s talk print for a sec. I am one of the few lone wolves still smudging my sticky fingers with the New York Times print edition and magazines. One particular magazine, Elle, is a favorite for many reasons: the fashion photography is beautiful, the typography is unique, the articles are aspirational (vacation home in the French countryside, please) and it just feels better than the typical women’s magazines on the newsstands today.
On a recent rainy Sunday, I curled up with the April issue of Elle and proceeded to indulge in an article devoted to women kicking ass in their respective fields. One such woman is Claudia Batten, COO of Bolder-based crowdsourcing agency Victor and Spoils. What is crowdsourcing, you might ask (I did)? Crowdsourcing is simply outsourcing advertising and marketing materials to the creative masses on behalf of corporate clients.
Victor and Spoils handles the process and “offers the strategic direction, engagement and relationship management that agencies deliver today, but one that also delivers the engagement, cultural relevance, results and return on investment that crowdsourcing {if managed and directed well} can deliver.”
Of course, we could play devil’s advocate here and write off crowdsourcing as nothing more than a group of freelancers working for one agency, or one agency outsourcing creative to reduce costs. Honestly though, I think V&S have something here. V&S don’t cloud the fact that they pay outsiders (consumers, essentially) to create the campaigns for clients; instead, V&S acknowledge the “crowdsourcing paradigm” and provide a convincing argument for allowing the agency to manage the process and align the crowdsourcing work with the strategy and brand (just like any agency would do internally.)
It’s the sense of community that the agency invokes that really turns me on to the idea. V&S want to hear from consumers, they want outsiders to voice their opinions and, in turn, churn out some pretty amazing work for clients.
I think they’re on to something. Once again, a fashion mag proves itself relevant to the real world.
Cheers!
