Crowdsourcing seems to be a bit of a free-for-all, doesn’t it? A brand or agency puts out a call to action and the teeming hordes descend to fight over the prize. Nothing particularly distinguished about that enterprise, is there? Those issuing the challenge look a bit desperate and those answering the call, well they look a bit more desperate.

Ah yes, but the ends justify the means, don’t they? Let’s take a look at two recent examples – Victors & Spoils and Pepperami:

Victors & Spoils opened their doors back in the early fall, touting a new agency model (strapline: The world’s first creative (ad) agency built on crowdsourcing principles), and one of their first actions was to crowdsource themselves a new logo. They got themselves one (reactions here, here and here), courtesy of Andrea Bigiarini, a talented Italian graphic designer (Great analysis and interview here).

Peperami recently ran a contest for new advertising creative. More than 1,000 entries were received via IdeaBounty and the winners were Kevin Baldwin and Rowland Davies, two ordinary Joes who between them have something in the neighborhood of 30+ years in the advertising business.

Peperami's 'Animal' character in action

So, for V&S and Peperami, this whole crowdsourcing thing is looking pretty good. Quality results for pennies on the dollar. And right now there is a glut of talent on the market so this is going to work well. But at some point down the road this is all going to go pear-shaped.  Consumers who wanted to genuinely participate are going to be frustrated as they can’t compete with the professionals like Bigiarini, Baldwin & Davies. Creatives are going to feel resentful as their training, skills and expertise is being grossly devalued.

A solution? How about forming something similar to an old fashioned Guild. What if brands and agencies, rather than shout into a megaphone for a ‘come one, come all’ cattle call, created a professional pool of talent that they had access to and who in turn had exclusive access to new opportunities? It would look something like this:

A creative would pay a yearly fee to be part of the V&S creative Guild. For this fee (say, $5000) the creative would be on a shortlist of talent that would receive briefs from V&S. Now here’s where it gets interesting: When a member of the V&S Guild submits an response to the brief, they get some cash back. The amount to be determined based on number of total entries and some sort of quality criteria established by the CD and V&S. Proactive participation in the Guild is thus rewarded and potentially a creative could make his $5000 back. 

Now V&S has a pool of qualified, talented and motivated creatives to choose from who don’t feel like they are being treated like a lowest common denominator commodity. Is this an ideal situation for creatives? No, but I think it beats the current alternative.

Brands and agencies may still want to hold ‘open casting calls’ for consumers to participate, but that could be a separate sort of contest in which ‘professionals’ would be prohibited from participating.