Join the crowd or stay as you are

Well, there you have it. I’ve moved from North Sydney to sunny, leafy Stanmore - not much difference apart from the array of delightful food and as the team from Zuni will testify, amazing dumplings.

I’ve been working at Zuni for over a month now and yes it has flown by - the usual agency stuff, pitches, creative reviews, processes, marketing, our website, blog, twitter and some client work thrown in there too and like any agencies, especially a new fresh out of the wrapper one like Zuni, this has been amplified ten fold.

But here’s were it gets very interesting, imagine as a creative director you didn’t have a team! Blind panic, no team! Yes no team as in physically any teams sitting in the office. No flashguns, creative teams, writers’, techy geeks and all the usual freaks you have in traditional digital agencies.

What if your ‘team’ was a collection of people handpicked who came from all over the world and they were experts within their discipline? Your job was to facilitate and guide the creative process. Yes that’s what CD’s are suppose to do but when you have the ‘team’ operating not just out of Australia but from all over the world, it puts a new perspective on it.

Exciting but bloody scary and from someone who came from a traditional above the line agencies through to traditional digital agencies with internal teams this is a totally new approach in managing a creative floor and yes in tweet world, many digital agencies who were the new guns in town are now seen as traditional agencies - how ironic.

To be honest I was spooked and something that really did rattle me around crowd sourcing was the quality of work and the perception from clients and agencies as a cheap way to get ideas, that’s something I really didn’t want to be a part of, thankfully nor does Zuni.

At Zuni we have been working to refine our platform and how we crowd source our work from a cost and bounty perspective to groups.

Some Zunified crowd sourcing approaches we are looking at:

We have a team here at Zuni with a tremendous amount of experience in their field. As a team we will review and hand select our own crowd - we will invite people we rate and have worked with in the past - encourage them to invite others – with a view to pay a fee for recommendations.

By crowd sourcing our groups into ‘clusters’ with grades and rates from creative concept thinkers, designers, technology, film directors, illustrators, graphic designers &, writers etc., will make the search process easier and more streamlined.

Allow a project to pay in phases rather than one idea with one final bounty payment., by breaking it down into phases throughout the delivery process we feel the work will be stronger as you have a specialist working at that particular phase.

Keep the crowd open at the start as ‘amateurs can bring surprises’ and filter towards the end of the process.
We will grow and reinvest in our crowd – by collating the best work that didn’t get made for one reason or another – and make it - all creative’s worth their salt want their work made. That way we’ll keep the quality and have the best people onboard.

Encourage your crowd to participate and review and over time facilitate meet ups, even hold events in different parts of the world.

Yes it’s different but the world is changing and many people are finding this approach a really effective way in working and in time this could become the normal way in working especially in the communications industry.

I would love to hear your thoughts or if you are interested in becoming part of Zuni’s crowd sourcing team then let me know via email: kevin.ferry@zuni.com.au or on twitter @kevinferry, and who knows you could be doing some great work and get paid well for your efforts

Print is it dead?

Last week I was over at Reactive (very nice offices in the heart of Sydney in Crown Street also they have very nice pizzas too) anyway this was one of our regular creative gatherings at Creative Social this time we had two dudes Murray Bell from Snakes and Ladders and Pete Murray from Semi Permanent talking which was very interesting especially when Murray started talking about the niche magazine Movement Magazine for those that don't know as their Google search describes are: Movement bodyboard magazines official website. All things bodyboarding. Professional riders, with contests and competitions

As the talk went on and as the audience were mostly all from the digital space the question came up as it always does, 'Is your magazine sales decreasing'? and as always digital folk lick their lips in anticipation on hearing that it's all going rat shit, with cobwebs developing on the printing press.

Well the the response was the opposite in that it has remained steady, sales haven't dropped off even with the access of the web especially for this audience you would have thought sales would drop. Murray said that it's changed but the print option hasn't declined so why hasn't sales dropped? Murray's and the Magazines response was; they made the mag more desirable by increasing the weight of the paper, they hired more top draw photographers and upped their content in quality with more substance ,for instance they did a piece on Hawaii not just the tourist side of things but also the number of homeless people living there. They have now attracted a much broader audience beyond just surf dudes- from film, art and culture demographics. Smart move.

The magazine became more of a 'coffee table' magazine which was much more tactile and that's were digital will always lose out - the fact that you can touch and feel the mag and see the images in their full glory will always be a big pull that's not to say digital doesn't play its part for instance; what about video content, comments, and eComm functionality are all better experiences than just using print, so print isn't dead it's just evolved and the most successful brands are working more hand in hand with digital. As always you've got to know your market, and the team over at Movement Magazine certainly know their audience.

Warmest Christmas with a tweet

Spotted this little gem called 'Twitter Knitter' and reckon this is the best agency christmas card so far, as we all know in agency land most people roll their eyes and shudder with the thought of doing a 'cool card' as CEO's like to say. The idea is basically the agency will be selecting the most festive Christmas tweets, containing the hashtag #WarmUpCamden, to knit as messages into scarves.
The scarves will be distributed to people in Camden, (It's were the agency is based and if anyone has been to Camden Town in London parts are how shall we say; bloody scary, they will approach people who look like they need warming up. (Bloody brave but that could be fun filming that while some creative luuvies get bashed by a bunch of old Scottish drunks, that would go viral).
Anyway all of the #WarmUpCamden tweets appear on twitterknitter.co.uk. Visitors can watch the winning tweets being knitted into scarves live from within the agencies via three webcam links. A 'cool' idea that warms the heart around this time of year. Below is a selection of some of the tweets.

Plaster art

Someone who loves art and I love the work of many especially urban artists like Banksy but I came across this dude – he’s taken it to whole new level. Not just using the wall as a canvas he ‘turns the wall’ into the canvas. Lovely work, so next time some old plaster falls from the wall I might just start having a go myself.

Powerful storytelling with music and imagery

Woah slow down

A 3D-like illusion of a young girl playing in the middle of the street it's a campaign by drivers to slow down ironically this campaign was aimed at parents who were dropping their kids off on the school run- very powerful stuff and certainly would stop anyone in their tracks even some crazed hoon in his jumped up Holden but I can’t help thinking that this could be a dangerous road to take (excuse the pun) in that people could mistaken this as one of those adverts and it turns out to be a real kid.

Judging by the road deaths every year and people’s driving skills especially in Sydney,I wonder if a campaign like this would work in Australia?

Social media via your mobile

Another one of those infographics from Flowtown I love their work, this is a cracker, it visual shows how people are interacting with social media via their mobile and yes some very tasty piecharts