For their Peperami brand in the U.K ,Unilever has recently dropped Lowe, their agency of 15 years, and decided to crowdsource for their latest campaign.
Through www.ideabounty.com Unilever plans to source ideas from 4.500 registered creatives around the world by offering a $10,000 bounty for the winning idea.
The brief is to continue to build on the ‘Peperami: It’s a Bit of an Animal’ campaign which was developed by Lowe and has delivered great success for the brand. Peperami is one of the largest UK consumer brands and has been built on the back of ‘The Animal’ which is a tiny snack-man and is the established face of the brand.
This raises many questions for me.
Firstly, how fair is to use the conceptual skills of a great agency like Lowe to develop the massively successful Peperami campaign then put the brief out to ‘the world’ to simply extend it?
Secondly, whilst Unilever denies it, how can we be expected to think anything other than they’re trying to save money. The $10,000 they’ve offered on Idea Bounty is a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of creative hours that will go into all the ideas that will be developed.
Thirdly, what value Unilever will derive from the next successful installment of ‘The Animal’ campaign bearing in mind that sales of Peperami in the U.K are nearly $50m annually. The measly $10k ‘reward’ seems to completely ignore the value that these concepts bring to a brand.
Fourthly, how much time will it take Unilever marketing execs to sort through the multitude of ideas, work out which ones, if any, have any merit and then work with the originator to further refine it. I suspect that if Unilever did an honest and objective post analysis they’d find that the whole exercise proved to be a classic case of ‘false economy’
Finally, if they do find the ‘big idea’ who’s going to produce it? Unilever? Often bringing an idea to life is as important and coming up with the idea itself. Sometimes it’s more important. I think Unilever has completely missed this point.
I had a look through the brief and Unilever don’t just want rough ideas. They want fully worked up print and TV ads and in video form preferably. Between this and the idea generation each participant could easily have spent 20-30 hours on their submission. If Unilever receives only 20 submissions then that’s 600 hours of ‘creativity’. If we valued that time at a conservative $150 per hour then the value of the work submitted is at least $90,000. Given that those numbers are probably conservative then I reckon Unilever are ‘having a lend’
You might expect an instantly defensive response to this from an agency person like me but I’ve thought about this from a very objective viewpoint.
The only conclusion I can come to is this marketer has used Lowe to develop a highly successful property which is worth tens of millions to them then at a very convenient juncture decided to ‘crowdsource’ an extension of it to save money. In others words, having ‘used’ Lowe they’re now ‘using’ the creative community.
To my my mind it’s creative abuse we shouldn’t sit back and watch it happen.
For their Peperami brand in the U.K, Unilever has recently dropped Lowe, their agency of 15 years, and decided to crowdsource for their latest campaign.
Through www.ideabounty.com Unilever plans to source ideas from 4,500 registered creatives around the world by offering a $10,000 bounty for the winning idea.
The brief is to continue to build on the ‘Peperami: It’s a Bit of an Animal‘ campaign which was developed by Lowe and has delivered great success for the brand. Peperami is one of the largest UK consumer brands and has been built on the back of ‘The Animal’ which is a tiny snack-man and is the established face of the brand.
This raises many questions for me.
Firstly, how fair is it to use the conceptual skills of a great agency like Lowe to develop the massively successful Peperami campaign and then put the brief out to ‘the world’ to simply extend it?
Secondly, whilst Unilever denies it, how can we be expected to think anything other than they’re trying to save money. The $10,000 they’ve offered on Idea Bounty is a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of creative hours that will go into all the ideas that will be developed.
Thirdly, what value will Unilever derive from the next successful installment of ‘The Animal’ campaign – bearing in mind that sales of Peperami in the U.K are nearly $50m annually. The measly $10k ‘reward’ seems to completely ignore the value that these concepts bring to a brand.
Fourthly, how much time will it take Unilever marketing execs to sort through the multitude of ideas, work out which ones, if any, have any merit and then work with the originator to further refine it. I suspect that if Unilever did an honest and objective post analysis they’d find that the whole exercise proved to be a classic case of ‘false economy’.
Finally, if they do find the ‘big idea’ who’s going to produce it? Unilever? Often bringing an idea to life is as important and coming up with the idea itself. Sometimes it’s more important. I think Unilever has completely missed this point.
I had a look through the brief and Unilever don’t just want rough ideas. They want fully worked up print and TV ads and in video form preferably. Between this and the idea generation each participant could easily have spent 20-30 hours on their submission.
If Unilever receives only 20 submissions then that’s 600 hours of ‘creativity’. If we valued that time at a conservative $150 per hour then the value of the work submitted is at least $90,000. Given that those numbers are probably conservative then I reckon Unilever are ‘having a lend’.
You might expect an instantly defensive response to this from an agency person like me but I’ve thought about this from a very objective viewpoint.
The only conclusion I can come to is this marketer has used Lowe to develop a highly successful property which is worth tens of millions to them, then at a very convenient juncture decided to ‘crowdsource’ an extension of it to save money. In others words, having ‘used’ Lowe they’re now ‘using’ the creative community.
To my my mind it’s creative abuse we shouldn’t sit back and watch it happen.
Paul Cornwell is a Partner at BCM
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Having worked at the above-mentioned agency in London and having seen first-hand the investment in building that brand into what it is, I think it is appalling.
It also raises some serious questions over IP.
How can agencies safeguard themselves against this type of behaviour? KPIs and annual bonuses don’t really cut it when you really try and assess the equity built in a brand over time.
Take Tesco for instance, how can one measure the real value of a brand idea like “every little helps”?
Given that one in every single 8 pounds spent on the High Street goes to Tesco and this idea or philosophy is not only customer facing but influences and embodies everything the company do.
Maybe the industry as a whole needs to unite and develop some form of metrics that ensures that brand ideas can be fairly valued.
The last creative outsourcing resulted in ‘iSnack2.0′. And that was the simplest brief of all – a name.
Sure that was a response from the public, but I wonder how many great creatives are sitting around at home waiting for a one in 4,500 chance of winning $10K based on a decision from marketers punchdrunk with thousands of disparate ideas?
Putting aside the fact it’s so wrong on so many levels, they might, just might, get lucky. This time.
But for mine, the future of a brilliant campaign property, built with so much care and inspiration over so many years, has officially been put on notice.
Boo. Hiss.
I think that the only people threatened by this campaign are creatives at agencies who want to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that an opt-in workforce or “crowdsourcing” is not the way a lot of what they’ve done (and been extremely well compensated for) in the past will happen in the future. Good or bad, it’s coming, and why not? The web has methodically toppled every business with walled barriers to entry. Marketing is next. That’s not to say that agencies will go away. Smart ones like Mullen and BBH are already positioning themselves as leaders in this sea change. Someone will have to steer these efforts and combine them with traditional channels/efforts.
Unilever’s foray into crowdsourcing their marketing for Pepperami (though I don’t love their approach) is an intelligent decision. Consumers want a voice, participation and connection with a brand: benefit of which will always go to the consumers themselves….finally Why wouldn’t they try it? Just because they’ve paid Lowe for the past 15 years?
I agree totally – this is outrageous – shame on U.K. Unilever – wonder if crowd sourcing marketing is next?
I have to respond to that comment James – fair go as we say in Australia. I agree with you that the web has irrevocably changed many business models – good advertising agencies are all over the opportunities that this presents for our clients and their brands. However I think you’ve missed the main point of the post. The issue is not so much that Unilever have decided to crowdsource creative – their call if they were dissatisfied and decided to consult the crowd for a better idea. What I find outrageous is that they’re consulting the crowd to extend a very successful brand idea that currently exists. You’d have to question the motivation for that? Would the fact that you work for tongal.com – a creative crowdsourcing site have anything to do with your passion about the topic?
Firstly, I agree that it will waste a lot of the marketing team’s time. They will be trawling through so many bad entries and they will have underestimated the time it will take and the project will have to be revised to put more resources into to.
But secondly – I have a question… if the client is paying for the “released” creative (i.e. all rights handed over to the client), then how is that unfair for the agency if it’s priced accordingly?
I am sure over time (15years) they have paid a handsome sum to the agency for the creative, so shouldn’t it then belong to the client?
If a creative director comes up with ideas for an agency, that IP is owned by the agency, because they are paying him/her to do that. How is that different from an agency being paid by a client for creative ideas?
I wonder what would happen if you tried to crowdsource, say, a divorce settlement – $10,000 for the solicitor can extract the largest share of the marital pool. Or what about $10,000 for the accountant who can deliver the biggest company tax return.
Thanks for your comments folks. All good healthy debate. Just to clarify, I’m not against ‘crowdsourcing’ ideas at all. What I do have problem with is taking a concept developed by one agency (who rightly ‘own’ the idea) and then when it has proved to be enormously successful, crowdsource ideas to extend it on the cheap. It’s like having an architect design and build a very successful and famous building then calling for submissions to design another stage for a fraction of what it would cost to get the originator of the design to do.
Also, I think the amount being offered doesn’t reflect at all the creative hours put into the project or the long term value of the winning concept.