Idea Bounty is less than a year old and is already starting to make waves on a global scale. Over the course of the last ten months, big name brands such as Red Bull, BMW, WWF and Castle Lager have all hosted briefs on our platform and all of them have bought an Idea resulting from this brief. As I’ve noted before, we have a 100% success rate in terms of finding clients the best Idea. Oh, and did I mention we have paid out over $20 000 in bounties?  

New Model for Idea Generation 

Idea Bounty is trying and testing what should become an important part of a viable agency model. Let me clarify; Idea Bounty is not a replacement for an agency - it is merely a tool that can be used very effectively to source ideas for any number of problems that then need to be crafted and executed effectively. The benefit of taking this route is that you open yourself up to ideas that can literally appear from anywhere. Just look at Red Bull, who wanted a new drinking ritual to rival the popularity of The Jager Bomb or the Double Vodka Red Bull - where did they find their Idea? Lurking in the creative mind of Joanne Huysamen, a publicity and event co-ordination manager.   

The significant thing about Idea Bounty is that the briefs we host are merely looking for an Idea, not a finished and crafted piece of work. Red Bull are now going to take Joanne's idea and develop a campaign around her drinking ritual to kick-start its popularity and get the ball rolling. To do this, Red Bull is going to have to contract an agency to execute and roll this idea out. This is why Idea Bounty is not a replacement for anything, but rather an additional useful tool in a marketer’s arsenal. The capacity of this model to successfully work is illustrated below.  

What’s Happening Now?

Last Friday, we posted a brief on behalf of Peperami, a meat stick snack in the UK. The significance of this brief is the size of the Peperami brand - 110 million sticks of Peperami are eaten annually and to top that, in the last year, the brand brought in £38 million for its parent company, Unilever. (Source: http://www.unilever.co.uk/ourbrands/foods/peperami.asp) 

The brief on Idea Bounty is asking for "a new print and TV ad that will be an unapologetic, unexpected and incredibly memorable piece of communication.” Peperami is offering $10 000 to a single campaign concept that demonstrates a winning TV and print idea OR $5000 to the winning TV concept and $5000 to the winning Print concept. There is also an optional $5000 for unexpected brilliance. The announcement of the brief has received a lot of attention, check out these articles on Campaignlive.co.uk and Econsultancy. 

As you can imagine, this has stirred up quite a controversial conversation - there is a large amount of resistance out there, especially from agencies that feel very threatened by the shift toward crowdsourcing. The Peperami brand campaigns center around a character called "The Animal", which was created by creative agency, Lowe. They had previously held the Peperami account since 1993. Noam Buchalter, Marketing Manager for Peperami explains the move.

 "What we really wanted was some fresh eyes on the 'Animal' character and the campaign. I think it is an outstanding character that has been created, but it is difficult to keep him fresh with the limited number of people working on the ads. 

Our agency Lowe has done some fabulous work on the Peperami brand but we felt that a new approach could yield something fresh. The 'Animal' character is already well defined so we think that crowdsourcing will really work here, and attract more ideas from creative people." 

(More here: http://econsultancy.com/blog/4511-q-a-unilever-s-noam-buchalter-on-crowdsourcing-peperami-ads) 

After Unilever find and reward the best Idea (and awards a hefty Bounty of $10,000), it will be developed into a global campaign with the help of Smartworks - a London based creative production company.

The New Agency Model  

Unilever is pioneering an innovative new model here - instead of keeping the whole process with one agency, they are spreading their wings and picking the fruit from where it is most ripe. A break-down of the model would be as follows:

1. A brand (i.e. Peperami) puts a brief up on the Idea Bounty site, looking for the best solution to a brief. They offer a Bounty in return for the best Idea.
2. The brand selects the best Idea and then approaches either a pre-selected production partner (in the case of Unilever, Smartworks) or the best suited agency to execute the Idea after it has been chosen. 

This could just be the next stage in the evolution of marketing. It is inherently more sensitive to market-forces as it levels the playing fields as far as creatives are concerned - giving them the opportunity to communicate their ideas to global brands. In addition, it exposes brands to a limitless number of new, innovative marketing ideas. Not to mention the added benefit of lots of PR and direct interaction with your consumer base that could provide unexpected insights. If this still looks like we are forgetting professional creatives, keep in mind that the model does not remove the need for traditional agencies as the ideas generated will still need to be implemented.

It may be time for both clients and their agencies to start considering the use of crowdsourcing and sites like Idea Bounty as an opportunity to add huge value to their business. The reality is that crowdsourcing as a model is being tested with success. If agencies choose to ignore the concept, they may suffer the same fate as the music industry.      

Also check out:

• The Idea Bounty Blog