Is This Crowdsourcing??

Lots of talk going on today about the new 'crowdsourced' Peperami ad for Unilever. It's the usual stuff for the brand, decent if not amazing, but for me the biggest news is how it was created.

Unilever keep stating it was 'crowdsourced' to save on paying the retainer costs of an ad agency, an idea put out to the general public, and the best ad was made and will be shown.

Except.

The character, the campaign idea and the strapline already existed. Created for by a paid, retained ad agency team and tried and tested over a long period of time. The only part of this ad that was actually put out to the public was the script for this execution.

Now let's add to this the fact that the winning team was a pair of ad execs shall we? Open up the general public to submit their ideas, and in the end the best one came from two ad folk... hardly suggests a response worth publicising does it? It ends up looking like a piece of tight budget cutting instead of a real attempt to let people take control of your brand.

[Update - As Charles mentions in the comments, it's definitely a case of a PR brief . However the fact it was won by an ad team using an agencies' campaign idea makes me think the PR isn't actually that great.]

Why did they (seemingly) not look at finding a smaller agency that could offer a lower cost without losing the planning and creative skill sets from the brand? How about one of the many talented non-London agencies, with no Central London rent costs? It annoys me that none of this appears to have been considered, an apparrent case of 'Big London agency or nothing', even when they are openly trying to reduce costs.

I suspect it's for the same reasons that the ad wasn't truly crowdsourced... it would have needed risk taking to change the campaign. But smaller/cheaper/non-london agencies (Like the one I work in) would love to work on a brand like Peperami; we would all work like crazy to make great work and would be much much lower risk than real crowdsourcing of a new campaign.

I have nothing against the idea of crowdsourcing, and absolutely nothing against Unilever or Peperami, I just want accuracy. If we are going to talk about crowdsourcing, can we not do so when we really just mean 'hiring freelancers' please.

Terms of Endearment

As an industry, advertising and marketing is far too full of bullshit terms. Whilst I understand the need to simplify things for ease of use, often we end up screwing around with what these terms actually mean, which in turn affects how clients and others see these things.

What marketing terms are you fed up of? What do you think we should replace them with?

Here are some of my hated ones, plus a few I've heard being discussed:

Brand/s - This is one of those where it makes sense to have a word that describes that essence of what a company/product stands for and does. At uni brand was the buzz word thrown everywhere, and that I believe is why people hate it. Indeed there was a conscious movement by many bloggers not long ago to stop using it for a month.

Consumers - No. People in all their diversity and difference are not simply a category of mindless purchasing zombies. Again, its a useful word in describing people, but really we can do better. It sounds like a big evil corporate mantra that anti-brand (heh) types would have a field day picking apart. We have to engage people, and if we treat them like sheep we are never going to do that except by luck. Why not just say: People.

Social Media - Not one of mine. I think it's a reasonable description. It could be improved sure, and it is getting overused... but it does its job.

Viral - Viral is not a thing. Viral is what it does. You cannot make a viral, you can make some content for your brand (heh), put it up on social media (heh heh) and hope. But if it doesn't work, it's not a viral. If no one likes it, it's not a viral. If all 30,000 views come from agency and client staff, it's not a viral. Why not just say: Content. If you must... Content that we want to go viral.

Regional Agency - Been over this one before. A patronising term that insults the work and staff of every decent agency outside the M25. And there are plenty thank you very much. Why not just say: Agency, UK Agency. If you must: Agencies outside London.