London, 27 August, 2010 – Peperami has just launched a new “it’s a bit of an animal” advert to British TV viewers. The ad features the memorable self-cannibalising “animal”, from earlier Peperami ads, but now it has equally wild kids – “they’re bits of an animal”. Having recently split with Lowe, their agency of 15 years, Peperami opted to source the creative idea for this ad, not from an agency, but from the “people”.
The latest ad was conceived and scripted by Rowland Davies, an ex-creative director from Germany who submitted his idea with Kevin Baldwin, a copywriter from London. Their joint effort beat 1,185 entries and won the $10,000 prize facilitated by crowdsourcing platform, Idea Bounty. The 30-second ad is currently airing on ITV1 during Coronation Street.
Peperami’s new agency, BPL, are vocal supporters of crowdsourcing, despite the present danger to their business model (agencies who flog ideas as their bread and butter have reason to feel threatened by new cheaper models for doing the same thing).
“Innovative, hybrid working methods like this will open the door for the lower cost smaller agencies who are used to collaborating successfully with other agencies.” says Emma Hughes, the Managing Director of BPL.
Noam Buchalter, Marketing Manager of Peparami, said: “A large proportion of submissions were from experienced, creative professionals and being the first crowd-sourcing project for the brand, we couldn’t have asked for a better response.”
Quirk eMarketing, the folks behind the Idea Bounty crowdsourcing platform say this is just a small taste of what is possible with this new tool.
“We have been beta testing Idea Bounty for over a year now and lots of big brands have used it in various ways,” says Rob Stokes, CEO of Quirk. “ Yes, Idea Bounty can be used to create ads more cost-effectively, but it can also be used to harvest great ideas from a global creative community and can solve virtually any marketing problem.”
Since Idea Bounty opened to briefs in November 2008, more than 13 major brands have outsourced to the online community to crack open marketing problems. Clients have included BMW, Levi’s®, WWF and Unilever. At present, Chevrolet has a brief posted on Idea Bounty. All briefs to date have seen a successful result with the best ideas run as real campaigns.
A major bank has used Idea Bounty to generate ideas to persuade more people to bank online and a leading beer brand has asked the community to come up with a theme and slogan to unite all their football sponsorship activities.
Nic Ray, who runs both Idea Bounty and Quirk eMarketing in the UK says, “There are differences between Idea Bounty and other crowdsourcing platforms. While Idea Bounty is open to anyone to submit ideas, the greater majority of people in our 12,000 strong international community are professional creatives by day. The ideas are therefore generally of a very high standard and well explained.”
Brands that post their briefs on Idea Bounty have the opportunity to tap into some of the best creative minds in the business. Ideas are sourced from the “crowd” for any marketing brief, and creative minds with little time on their hands but great ideas on the fly are only required to submit a few words or a sketch. An idea alone can and has won the bounty, no specifications or implementations are required!
Also involved in developing Idea Bounty is former Added Value Group head and Global Marketing Director of SABMiller, Mark Sherrington. “Idea Bounty is not right for every brief or every situation, and it certainly does not sound the death knell for the conventional ad agency. Rather, it is an alternative and an exciting tool that both clients and agencies can use to widen their idea sourcing net.” says Sherrington.
Former clients have left the exercise armed with new insight into the way people see their brand and with new angles with which to approach their marketing problems.
“In a world where ideas really are the new currency, we were extremely excited about the prospects of tapping into a platform like Idea Bounty. Staying truly ‘fresh’ is a perpetual challenge and we’re very clear that the secrets to achieving this are celebrating great ideas; and staying in touch with your consumers. What’s great about Idea Bounty is it does both,” says Mike Leslie, Innovation & Sponsorship Manager at Levi Strauss.
Rob Stokes, CEO of Quirk says the sky is the limit for Idea Bounty. “We’ve come through the beta testing phase with flying colours and we’ve learned a lot about how to take this vehicle to the next level. We are actively in discussion with investors who want to support us to build this business in the UK and beyond, so watch this space. If we hit any marketing problems we’ll just use Idea Bounty to help us solve them!”
MORE ABOUT Idea Bounty
Idea Bounty (wwww.ideabounty.com) was founded by Quirk eMarketing in 2008 with the purpose of offering a platform for brands to gather the best creative ideas for their most challenging briefs, rewarding only the best idea. At the same time Idea Bounty offers an opportunity for creative people to come up with creative ideas for inspirational brands and get a financial reward if they win. Idea Bounty has more than 11.000 registered creatives and has worked with brands such as FNB, Levi’s®, BMW, Red Bull, The World Wild Life Fund and Castle Lager. Idea Bounty was created by Quirk eMarketing, an award-winning online marketing agency.
For more information, contact:
Daniel Neville, Idea Bounty Managing Director
+27 (21) 462 7353
Editorial Contact:
Kristi Hansen, Quirk PR
+27 (11) 463 0775
