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I go "ZOMG" and sends this post to two close female friends out of state, while scheming how to get my hands on a tripod and a camera, so that I can animate wire flower, or pull a William Kentridge, or something.
I assume this is why crowdsourcing is powerful. I really want to make a video. I like Etsy, Etsy's message of anyone can make stuff and selll if it is a good quality product. (I believe in the stitch 'n bitch world). And I want my friends involved in my video. Hopefully, despite a total current lack of equiptment it will still happen.*
At the end of the day it is all about how I really like to draw and do wire sculptures and give them away-and I think etsy is a better model for some people. You just need to find enough people who are going to either a) agree with you, and help you along or b) are going to be your customers/users and also help you along.
Identify your product lovers, your product users-
and you too will have emails sent out on your behalf.
Behold the power of crowd sourcing.
*Just the power of me asking around to borrow equiptment and computer time is also word of mouth power. Think on that.
Marie
Web Site: global brain candy on www.mariewiltz.com
Twitter: mariewiltz
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mariewiltz
________________________________
I'm continuously discovering these new angles at my company. There is a common thread with those discoveries - "Duh, it's so obvious!", AFTER you or someone else has thought of it :)
-Matt
submit it
that's what this is all about
http://www.poptent.net/
Heya Fred developed the idea of Monetization into a notional framework this AM (escaped the puppies at home so I could think and fled to the office): http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/06/23/notion...
I made up the percentage cuts based on squidoo's franchisee split (50/50). Obviously building all the pieces in house makes for a greater share. But I think greater value is generated by dividing up the pieces and using the best technology. I really want to see social media not only feed itself but provide incentive for others (like me) to host windows into their worlds.
In almost no other aspect of a firm's operations does it do this, but executives still think it is okay to underpay talent, just for the benefit of publicity. I don't see Etsy offering to manage the code of its site for a few grand, yet it expects others to produce its ads for a pittance.
As per a lot of criticism (and counter critique) from parts of the current forms of Feminism out on the Internet- Etsy has mostly female buyers and sellers, mostly college educated, mostly with part time jobs or not working at all. They are relatively young, in their young, in their 20s and 30s. I would hedge that in some ways, they flock to Etsy as a result of the early 90's boom in books and 'zines that outgrew the Stitch 'n Bitch movement. That itself was born out of the editor of Bust! Magazine creating the first sets of easy DYI projects, primarily knitting, that were campy and cool rather than proper, in the magazine, because she was bored of what Vogue knitting/crafting types were offering. It is now perfectly legit to wear a knit bikini, or to craft handmade soaps with the Jolly Roger rather than ones that look like roses.
Etsy broadened the base. There is only so much you can craft. In my own community, the most common craft is to crochet a yamulke (I can crochet, but not yamulkes), although other needlecrafts are popular. Without Etsy, crocheted yarmulkes will probably still always have the political (Zionistic of various types) and slight sexual (Your girl made you a yarmulke, even if you paid for it) overtones. Etsy tends to break down those barriers by creating a baazar-like marketplace. How many pairs of earrings, baby bonnets, handmade cotton dresses- can you either sell at craft fairs, or give away?
Further- Etsy created a community that was international in scope. If I were making yarmulkes, I could have a conversation about yamulkes on Etsy with all the other yarmulke makers. We could source cheap thread, and obtain market power together by buying in a collective group. It also created a community of what else is out there about crafting and DYI. I could start out in yarmulkes, and end up learning how to use a saw to make earrings. For many people, this is extraordinarily empowering.
I am not on Etsy's board. I own no stock. I would hedge a huge guess though, that based on knowing intimately the target market-
That empowerment is a huge part of Etsy's mission and it's Internal Ethos, regardless of gender, and regardless of its historical relationship to feminism.
Any campaign has to respond to that Mission.
How do I know?
I'm a (semi)-typical example of Etsy's demographic. I'm in my early 20's, I'm female, white, from an Orthodox Jewish background (current affiliation, err, in complicated flux), I know how to sculpt in wire, I buy things on occasion from Etsy, and I am in the process of becoming over-educated. It is likely that I will marry as they say where I am from "well." My close female friends also either discuss buying things from Etsy, or buy things from Etsy, or places like Etsy.
Note that above I said that I wanted to make this spot, and that I emailed two friends about the spot, who are also within that same target demographic. What I didn't mention was discussing with my mother about borrowing cameras from a family friend, and whether my aunt (who can't use email...oy), about whether her custom needle pointed phylacteries and tallis bags should be sold on Etsy (per womanhour, would she get a good price?) My mother, my aunt and thier friends- are outside the target demographic. My mother also spent some time admiring the bags on the site...
If I am the target market, and I am responding well, and sent my mom to the site! then the campaign is working.
Feel free to ask questions about being within the target demographic. I really don't mind. Could prove useful to someone out there.
It was obviously thought out, but came right out of left field.
I think what Joseph was commenting on can be found on craigslist.com/gigs/creative. Companies expect whiz bang website design and graphics for little to no money, but only offer the addition of the work being added to a "students" portfolio. They are being exploited. Artists are going to remain poor if they continue to accept these terms. You don't see medium sized companies looking for an accounting student to do their taxes.
I think crowdsourcing this type of thing is great, but 10k split 7 ways...
If I gossip out to others outside of the demographic because of this campaign, the end result is that Etsy won customers. Etsy is not my friend. It is a service that provides an outlet for a need at a price. I'm fine with it, mostly because I know that it would be impossible to produce real money there for the vast majority. And I think the majority realize that fact as well.
B) I know- Even though I want to do high art on a computer about the internet and society- I know that to build cash to do so- it is better to sell my 3d drawings on Vellum Paper first. Fungible items that are difficult to copy in a portfolio and are Unique to me, even if they are somewhat personal- can have a stable market value, despite art world funniness. Theoretical work that plays on internet funniness depends far more on the art market and on the tech market. And it doesn't help that I am a student without real resources to the machine works that produces the graphics to create high art. You don't start doing art, and expanding outward from there, unless you think too much.
I know my goals relating to my work long and short term- one of them is to avoid exploitation if I can.
Why *overpay* ad agencies for ads that mostly suck?
Every five minutes you see = 24 work hours. That's very basic post production. So it takes 4.5 hours to just cut and edit and insert transitions. Filming takes god knows how long. Really pro people will have totally separate people editing than filming.(Always film more than you need to).
Rend time is whatever it takes when it comes to effects. And you might need to go back and fix it. Sound I am not an expert on, but because one records sound separately from the image- you can go in and edit that, as well as rerecord if you are able to.
Mind you- $3250 will only buy you an apple with the proper video card to run Maya and Final Cut Pro, Bootcamped, without sales tax (The NVidia that comes standard can't run Maya...and the better version of Maya should probably be run on Vista at 64 bit). No peripherals. No other graphic programs. No monitor. No cameras, mikes, ect. Not even the programs themselves.
You are not even recouping labor costs. (The only reason I know is because I am desperate to invest in one already and I can't afford it, and I am not sure how anyone does...Solutions anyone- since the jobmarket is sucky?)
I generally shy away from the orthodox or just orthodox label currently- per the age group parts of my identity are in flux- but sociologically I am very closely tied to where I grew up. Lots of education and low level seclusion from the rest of the world will do that (The neighborhood I grew up in is now primarily Orthodox of various stripes).
That being said- it is one of the reasons I maintain a totally separate identity on the Jewish blogsphere land- which is quite active. Actually, I regularly see blogs there that post multiple times a day and end up with comment threads over a 100 comments long. The internet is really radicalizing to those in niche communities- it gets alternative messages out that would otherwise be suppressed, and suppresses those it doesn't want to hear as well. As a result it is probably better to maintain semi-separated personas- real life can hurt when reputation on somewhat silly things is all that matters.
But what is worth noting is that there a whole collection of spaces that were previously "professional" that now embrace low cost, or no-cost consumer created content. CNN quotes Twitter, Huffington Post publishes unpaid contributors, Craigs list provides free classified ads for people who used to pay newspapers. Digital desktop tools break down barriers for creative expression and lower cost. Who's to say what the "standard" fee for a :30 commercial should be? If Etsy finds the contributions useful, and it helps build the community around Etsy, the makers of these ads benefit as well (as more traffic to Etys brings more buyers to the Etsy marketplace).
Overall, smart marketers are exploring all kinds of ways to engage social media. It's way to early to say how consumer created content will play a role, but its clearly going to be part of them mix.
Etsy's community (both sellers and buyers) are doing the same thing with the marketing function
Etsy's marketplace will approach $200mm in annual revenue this year but Etsy extracts very little of that revenue leaving most of it for the sellers. Items cost less under this low cost model which benefits the buyers
And yet Etsy is a profitable business because it utilizes a new model where everyone chips in and helps
You can call that cheap. I call it smart
(1) It takes a while to gather all the submissions.
(2) Entries will most likely not be professional level.
(3) You may have to advertise your product before launching.
Last year, we've done a version of this when I was working on YouTube Annotations. We did an internal contest (within the company): who makes the best video that shows the annotations uses. We had a few interesting submissions, worthy of launching with them as examples. In the end we still went with a professional video, which was better than the submissions. It was also much faster. (I think it took about a week to get the video)
As a few of the other commenters have mentioned, other options exist for companies looking to source their ad creative directly from creative folks.
Our startup, AdHack (http://adhack.com) helps companies do just that -- connect directly with ad creators. We call is a marketplace for ad creative.
Any other companies out there looking to source ad creative in new ways?
Check us out (and the others mentioned here) and let me know if I can help you decide if it's right for you.
Hope this comment isn't seen as self-serving. Just thought it might be interesting.
Thanks!
Sure Etsy is being a cheapskate by having users do promotion for them for next to nothing – but they are also genuinely engaging their rabid user base. Nothing wrong with either. It’s their choice. (And I think a smart one at that.)
Though I can understand why professionals (and for the record I’ve been a Creative Director for the last 15 years) could get upset, (like the recent flack over Google not wanting to pay designers for themes - http://tinyurl.com/mbjyaj). But, I don’t think that applies to Etsy in this case since they are a fledging company sans the Google coffers, with non-professionals contributing. Still to eliminate the notion of exploitation, Etsy should have given anyone who participated credit on Etsy. In turn it would drive folks to interact with other sellers, further community involvement and grow the service. Then everyone could put down their exacto knives and get along. ;)
The Legalease basically allows unlimited editing of the winning products- not much different than a good deal of free-lancing terms out there, which is how a lot of people get their feet in the doors...
You could turn this into a presentation slideshow contest. The combination of PowerPoint/Keynote, high-quality stock images and a sharing platform such as SlideShare provides the infrastructure to make pretty good and engaging slide shows (no bullet points of course).
Not as slick as video, but likely to get many more people to contribute.
But many online video ad units are in the 15 and 30 second format
http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/RobertRodriguez
With advertising budgets being slashed worldwide, surely this trend can only continue... I'm sure some ad firms have got their heads round the idea, but I wouldn't like to be in one of the 'stodgy' companies right now.