Trading in Partnership for Crowdsourced Design

Posted by schneidermike on Sunday, March 15, 2009 · View Comments 

Does good design come from good designers? Sort of. Good design does not even start with design. Whether for marketing, technology, product, etc it starts with a deep understanding of the needs of the consumer and the business stakeholders. If you have not worked with a next-generation agency, let me give you some insight into the process.

excerpt from the #specwork09 discussion

picture-18

  • Sessions begin with definition of business problems. We actually go into them hoping to define a business problem or series of problems to solve. It is not about “we want to design something” yet.
  • Audience Intelligence teams learn the needs, size, segments and location of the marketplace.
  • Strategists start to define the idea and the brand pillars or align the idea to current brand pillars. Design, Audience Intelligence, Media, and Analytics resources are involved to protect design interests, media availability and possibilities, and success measurement.
  • Consensus on ideas is built.
  • Campaigns are defined. Briefs are written.
  • Analytics teams figure out how to measure success, spot trends and forecast futures.
  • Now we design!
  • Execute
  • Measure
  • Rinse
  • Repeat

Through this process a connection is built between the agency and the client. The agency treats the client’s brand as their own and takes a level of responsibility for success. The designers are part of the strategy. They understand the process. They can discuss the pillars with the planners and strategists. They get true audience insight in a way that a single specification sheet cannot bring to light. They can talk to the measurement folks about how we define success. They weave themselves into the brand fabric and in some cases they follow a similar process across projects.

Your brand, your campaign, your SUCCESS depend on your experience and your marketing. The way I see it, you can pay a premium [or put together a creative model that allows an agency to be payed based on your success] for any agency that is thoughtfully integrated or you can throw it into the one-off crowdsourcing blender and hope you get a smoothie.

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  • Keith,

    Thanks for keeping the discussion from #sxsw #specwork09 alive on my blog.

    The designer and the agency have real skin in the game ability to focus on their projects. How can crowdsourced designers who have to throw shit at a ton of different walls in order to be able to find something that sticks expect to have the same level of understanding of a brand as the designers who are involved from the original strategy, who are living, eating, breathing, sleeping and eliminating it every day?

    Do I think I could write a "decent enough brief"? Yes. Could a planning team headed by someone like Catherine Kolodij or Justin Holloway write a better brief? INDEED!

    Part of the sweet spot of my company is the brief. We know the secret of boiling it down to a page. Can there be drill down from the brief? YES!
  • Hello Michael,
    I see your point of view but would like to ask you, a web marketing professional, a question. Do you think you could write a decent enough marketing brief to provide to 18 designers, then spend a week occasionally exchanging emails with them individually or the group as whole, offering feedback, and get what you want?

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but the designers in the agency scenario were briefed at some point right? Then you gave them feedback right? I agree that it helps if the same designer has worked on the same project for a while, but can their creative "bulls eye" really be better than that of 18 designer, each with pretty good shots?

    I recorded my experience with crowdsourcing web design on my blog to help small business owners get some quality work done at a price they can afford. The post is at http://www.emarketingmatador.com/design-well-fast-cheap. For small business in these economic times, approaching web design through crowdsourcing a good choice. Let me know what you think.
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