At blur Group, we’ve seen the waves of Crowdsourcing adoption, reaction and probably overreaction since Jeff Howe first coined the term back in that 2007 Wired article. We’ve witnessed the positive idea of the wisdom of crowds, and some of the negativity that there must be something flawed in a model where many can compete for one ultimate project.

Observing these has helped us reinforce the importance of our Creative Services Exchange approach. Where Crowdsourcing is part, but not all of the story. Where an Exchange ensures that both buyer and seller benefit – removing one of the issues that some Crowdsourcing platforms have encountered.

But what we’ve noticed in the last few months, after first taking creative briefs 2 years ago, is that Crowdsourcing is emerging from all the wailings of infancy and becoming an important and viable option for many businesses. Not just the startup wanting a logo. Not the business trying to get some coding done cheaply. Organizations wanting to change their way of sourcing. It seems that Crowdsourcing is growing up.

From our perspective as an Exchange, this is evidenced not just by the companies wanting to Crowdsource projects. It’s by the agencies and creatives wanting to be one of the many heads. There are two sides to the Crowdsourcing story: it seems to us that in some cases the Crowd has been taken for granted as if it just springs from nowhere. Not at blur Group: it’s why we developed Crowdsourcing creative into a full Exchange model. We’re rapidly approaching 14,000 creatives and agencies: every day we are delighted by the immense experience and expertise that these creatives show and deliver to those briefing the Exchange. Developing this sort of expert Crowd requires curation and management: it’s part of the evolution of Crowdsourcing from that unstructured assembly first envisaged.

In parallel, we’ve seen a significant change in the types and sizes of projects that are being briefed on the Exchange. $100K projects are becoming increasingly common; the kinds of business briefing range from the smallest earliest stage business, to global brands. 

As we’ve recognized this maturity from both the user of the Crowd to the Crowd itself it’s clear that businesses using Crowdsourcing do go through an adoption pathway. Few plunge into Crowdsourcing for business critical functions for their first project: our time running the Exchange has shown just how this works. We’ve identified three key stages:

Experimentation: an unstructured, unmanaged approach soliciting feedback and work from mixed ability crowds to test ideas and approaches. It’s what many understand by Crowdsourcing and is often used on social media platforms for a brand to get opinion and feedback from its customers. It’s also the basis of many ‘rewards’ based competitions when businesses want ideas or a quick solution.

Maturity: using Crowdsourcing to deliver significant projects: for example new product development, creative campaigns, software development and testing. This is characterized by models with a more advanced, managed process and a curated and experienced Crowd.

In all truthfulness, we’ve been surprised by how fast businesses have moved to mature adoption: we expected the development phase to last longer. Wherever you are in adoption, and if you are a provider, wherever you see your role in being part of a Crowd, it’s very obvious that Crowdsourcing is going to be part of your marketing makeup. We introduced the idea of Crowdsourcing 2.0 last year to show how the different flavors of Crowdsourcing have  a different impact and success; now we’ve seen that the expert, curated Crowdsourcing approach is what businesses have been waiting for.

Tell us where you are in your use of crowdsourcing – just click on the appropriate button below!

Whatever your stage of Crowdsourcing maturity, we hope that you’ll join or brief the Exchange soon!

 Here’s a list of KPIs you cannot afford to ignore:

Followers/Fans/Subscribers/Likes: This is the easiest metric to determine your reach on any social network. Use landing pages to help increase Facebook “likes” and provide regular blog content to get subscribers. Keep in mind that Facebookers can subscribe to your public posts without liking your page. View this list of tips to increase your Twitter following.

Traffic: Services like Google Analytics and URL shorteners (bit.ly or goo.gl) will track the number of visits to your page and from where the traffic originated. Social media platforms like WordPress and Facebook have built-in analytical tools as well that monitors traffic. Increase traffic by gaining more followers/fans/subscribers/likes and ask them to share your content with their networks.

Interaction: You should be aware of the number of Facebook likes and shares, retweets, and blog comments your content receives. This metric shows what type of content your audience prefers most and what keywords get their attention. Engaging content will spur more conversations making your content more visible to a larger group of people. Give useful information, ask questions, hold giveaways, and conduct surveys that encourage engagement between users and your brand.

Conversions: You need to know how much of your social media activity ends in sales. Customizing landing pages that coincide with specific user activities will allow you to track conversions and purchases derived from social media. Also use keycodes in tweets and status updates that customers can enter during purchase to get a discount. This will not only encourage them to follow and share your content, but you can easily track sales.

Internal: You should blog, tweet, and update your Twitter status regularly. Be sure you monitor what is being said about your company/brand and reply to questions and/or comments from users. Remember: social media is focused on engagement and you must be willing to accept positive and negative feedback. Monitor social media networks and the web in general for comments about you and your brand and be available to solve customer service or product issues.

As a bonus, check out this list of resources to help fine-tune your social media marketing strategy:

12 things every marketer should know about the new Facebook timelines: Facebook timelines changed the rules, but this compilation of tips and techniques will help you increase your brand’s visibility and reach.

Quick tips to increase your Twitter following: Getting Twitter followers is not as difficult as you may think. Use theses 12 tips quickly build your Twitter following.

20 essential social media channels and tools: There are tons of social media networks available today and the list continues to grow. Every network may not be right for you, but here are a few that are essential to your marketing strategy.

Submit a brief! Our expert marketers, creatives and agencies can help you get the most out of your social media marketing.

Tonya

Twitter announced this week amid a media storm that it has given itself the right to censor and withhold tweets and content in certain countries, in a blog post on Thursday 26th January.

The post, entitled “Tweets must still flow” harks back to a post a year ago, “Tweets must Flow”, in which the company stated “The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact … almost every country in the world agrees that freedom of expression is a human right. Many countries also agree that freedom of expression carries with it responsibilities and has limits.”

The updated version evolves the open exchange of information and the way it will now be treated on Twitter. By dealing with the limits that some countries have with the freedom of expression in a new and transparent way, Twitter aim to “give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world” (via Twitter).

Launched in March 2010, Pinterest is a user generated site allowing members to create theme-based image boards. Users populate their boards with online media and images using a “Pin It” Button, and content can also be “Re-Pinned” to boards. Like other social sites, users follow other users and can comment on “Like”s, “Pin”s and “Re-Pins”. Pinterest is currently still an invitation only site. 

Pinterest has grown greatly in popularity, particularly among the early adopter blogosphere community since it’s launch in 2010. Last year saw social networking focus on the visual, wiith Instagram reaching critical mass and a new emphasis on aesthetics in the way we socialise online coming to the fore. Screen Culture will continue to be a part of our lives as screen technology and mobile pads evolve further, allowing our consumption of curated visual aesthetics to spread and share even further ( via Trendwatching)

Pinterest is important to watch in social media for many reasons; the way the collaborative moodboard ability develops will allow brands and consumers to interact in a visual way more easily; brands can easily visualise their particular slice of the market in moodboard for; Pinterest is a great way to drive traffic to blogs and sites, and, perhaps most importantly, Pinterest is a creative tool as opposed to a broadcasting platform like Twitter and Facebook.

As Facebook embraces Pinterest so we see the mainstream acceptance of the site. New users will be exposed to the “Pinning” culture, more members will join the pinning community, and the way Pinterest drives visual social will be one to watch.

See you at the boards.

If you want more help in how social media developments can impact your business then submit a brief now!

The unchartered cyberspace realm of free speech, knowledge sharing and exchange is under fire from what could be a potentially make or break bill. SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act and PIPA, Protect IP Act, are being debated and to be decided next week by US Congress.

 To bring to our attention to these acts and the potential effects they could have on our daily lives, Wikipedia and a range of other sites have gone dark today in protest. Wikipedia’s English Language site bears a black screen with the words “For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.”.

So, what’s the deal? Isn’t the bill doing a good thing to protect copyright and IP? Ostensibly so, and the sister bills are supposedly a solution to prevent sites like Pirate Bay and others from sharing peer to peer film and music, harming industries where creators rely on income from sales which have been badly hit from internet piracy.

The problem is in the wording of the bills, and you can read a full copy here. What we actually have is what Naked Capitalism aptly calls “use nuclear-weapon-to-kill-a-mouse scale solutions to Internet piracy”.  That is to say, way, waaaay over the top legislations and clauses which amounts to censorship of the net and for freedom of speech to be in question. In essence, SOPA and PIPA are drafted in such a way that they are able to enforce website owners to police user-contributed material, which could lead to the blocking of entire sites, sites not appearing in search results, and severely affected access to online information.

User contributed material could include comments on your blog. Facebook updates, emails, links are all accountable for. Suddenly it become closer to home, doesnt it? China have a censorship on their web, could you imagine living in a world where your Facebook updates are under scrutiny, your Dropbox files have the potential to get you in a lot of trouble and your Gmail is affected?

This is why Wikipedia has made the stance, and others along with it. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo! have openly announced their opposition to SOPA in an open letter signed by founders, but haven’t blacked out in protest today. Alexis Ohanian, founder of bookmarking site Reddit said “ “The American dream is still alive and kicking,”, “There is no other industry in the world where you can take an investment that’s less than the cost of a Ford Focus, give it to some college students and create a $1bn business.” (via Guardian.co.uk), and it is this innovation and freedom that is threatened by SOPA and PIPA.

Silicon Valley is up in arms against the acts going through Congress, and you can protest too by adding your name to the petition,  and Tweeting your disagreement. Lady Gaga tweeted today “If #SOPA passes, there’ll be NO YouTube, Twitter, Google, Wikipedia, Facebook & many sites you love to use #stopsopa End Piracy Not Liberty”

What do you think? Had the blackout today affected your online life and raised awareness of SOPA?

2012 is set to see the trend for aesthetic social sharing gaining momentum even further; The Trend think tank Trendwatching predicts that “In 2012, ‘life’ will take place via ever more pervasive, personal, immersive and interactive screens”, so why would we not want to continue sharing life visually and engage on an aesthetic level all the more when our so-called “screen life” takes up more of our time?

So what’s the deal with instagram? Immediately adopted by fashionistas and cool hunters inspired by street style, instagram allows us to update a timeline of visual reports to followers. As the app comes inbuilt with filters and settings to make our camera shots look melancholy and retro, the immediacy of visual gratification is a real winner. It’s another platform for social media interaction that allows our daily lives to be documented in a rose-tinted way, and as our social conversations become more and more important, an accompanying illustration of chic and instantly cool imagery is nothing but a bonus.

 The first ever instagram exhibition was held in London in September 2011, paving the way for similar projects to follow. Lovers of the app have gathered together more and more for instagram walks, meet ups and a shared communal interest of iPhonography made cool with lomo effects and social interaction.

Where Hipstamatic started us getting all 70’s polaroid inpsired, instagram lets us share socially, a crucial development in its success. In an article ‘The Ugly Truth: Why Beauty Wins in 2012’, Edward Aten, founder of Swift.fm,  says that ‘Instagram makes our pictures less accurate, but what we lose in exactness we gain in the ability to create instant nostalgia and show our view of our subjects,’ but social media agency Rabbit disagree. Rabbit’s “Take on 2012 in social” predicts that “2012 could represent a return to reality. As our feeds become saturated with doctored images, we predict a backlash that will see users yearn for an unaltered view of the world around us – this will not just affect image services, but video and live reporting and writing using services like  Storify.”

Whichever way the pendulum swings, being aware of the way we consume aesthetics as brands will be crucial this year as the way in which we can develop our obsession with instagram and, no doubt, apps to come. Offline products from companies like Blurb who offer a coffee table book printed media of instagram pics can take the cool factor to a new tangible level.  Instaprint is a hirable device for parties and gatherings allowing instagram prints to be printed like Polaroids whenever an image is taken and labelled with a designated hashtag, taking the online social element to the offline.

Presentation of ourselves online is more essential now than ever, as we live and present ourselve online for social, business and pleasure. The projection of a perceived self has been the holy grail since the MySpace era and shows no sign of abating.

Brands are using instagram in various ways, and news companies are beginning to be aware of the platform for news reach. ““It’s probably just a matter of time before we get an iconic, newsworthy photo via Instagram, in the same way that Twitter and TwitPic have generated a number of newsworthy user photos, like Janis Krums’s famous photo of the U.S. Airways plane in the Hudson River,” says Andy Carvin of NPR (National Public Radio), a news organisation breaking ground on the social media platform.

Undeniably one to watch.

Have you seen brands use instagram in an innovative way? How do you think the aesthetic will develop this year? If you want to make the most of your brand’s visual appeal, then brief the Exchange now!

The hashtag #writersunite is spreading across Twitter and raising the issue of non payment for HuffPo bloggers, a discussion prevalent and repeated often online since the much publicised and lucrative deal with AOL.  Back in February last year Jason Linkins, a salaried writer for HuffPo gave his response in a somewhat patronising manner; the mainstay of his argument was, seemingly, that he is paid a salary since “there’s this expectation that on a daily basis, you will show up and do work. In an office and everything! There you are subject to things like deadlines”. The counter situation of bloggers working for free, being, in his view because “part of what “free” entitles you to is a freedom from “having to work.” No daily hours, no deadlines, no late nights, no weekends. You just do what you like when the spirit moves you.”

Mr Linkins obviously feels that bloggers deliver content for free because they can, and in part he is right. Can we really blame Ms Huffington for building a multi-million pound site form content that is readily supplied?

There is a culture of guest posting on larger blogs which many bloggers and writers engage in. It enables their content to be seen in front of a new, often larger audience, and it is common practise to guest post for others. Whether or not you choose to do so is at every writer’s discretion and a subject I have touched upon before. The benefits for a growing blog can be myriad, as building those all important stats for monetizing a site is crucial. Blogging for the Huffington Post offers exposure to a very large audience, although this is broken down by Nate Silver on FiveThirtyEightblog to be much less than perhaps hoped for by any contributing blogger, and that, in fact, most traffic comes to the News articles, not the blogs.

Nonetheless, these articles could be paid for, and they currently aren’t. Michelle Haimoff, a Huffpo blogger herself, explored possible models for blogger compensation back in 2009,. Her reason for suggesting a payment model was not from a moral standpoint, since she says “People are willing to write for The Huffington Post for free. I’m one of them. It’s great exposure, the tone is unapologetically opinionated and if you’ve ever met Arianna Huffington you’ve noticed that she exudes a kind of warmth and authenticity that is rare for people at her level in the media world.” Michelle’s angle is that the problem with so much aggregated free content is that there is more potential to have copy that isn’t top level standards. If the only bloggers who contribute are people that can afford to do so, are they really of a high enough standard to be paid in the first place?

Herein lies the catch. Huffpo risks sub-standard blogging from its unpaid resources, counter balanced by the offer of unending content by aspiring writers for free.

If people are happy to post for free, should they be allowed to do so? Or,  is it a moral duty of the Huffington post to set standards in paying contributors for providing content to a site that has a globally publicized revenue stream?

 If the #writersunite social media campaign wins a positive reaction from HuffPo the way in which large news agencies and sites work with bloggers could be changed dramatically. This is an issue around blogging versus writing, employment versus freelance and the perception of blogging as a resource not worth paying for.

The Huffington Post uses bloggers and, like many other sites making revenues from freely provided content, they are not compensating the power of the blogosphere they so readily harness. 

The #writersunite movement will huff and puff, but will whether they blow the house down remains to be seen. 

If you’re a writer who wants the opportunity to pitch for paid content projects, then join the Exchange. And if you’d like to brief writers whose quality shines through for real projects then brief now!

Post by Jo Gifford, one of blur Group’s new bloggers.

Myriad “how to’s” exist online to offer expert hints and tips to create a viral ad or video. The usual mix for an engineered viral is to combine a great, original idea with a key influencer strategy; the leverage of bloggers, tweeters and social media influencers to drive re-posts and viewings. Of course, the best and most amusing virals are by accident and organically produced outside of the marketing world (step up Carolyn Bourne,  mother-in-law from hell).

Man-made virals have a cool factor of conspicuous early adoption (oh, I saw that yesterday on Twitter,ages ago) and have a relatively short shelf life in social media years, in which a whole day is akin to centuries in off-line time,. They are difficult to engineer well enough to get the mother-in-law appeal of genuine widespread buttock clenching anticipation and they don’t have a resolution, unlike a real-life story.

With social media showing no signs of slowing down or becoming less intrinsic to our lives, the obsession with going viral is unlikely to abate. But, does the aim to go viral obliterate other potential innovations in marketing approaches for the social media age? During our social media saturation are there key ‘back to basics’ approaches that marketers could tap into for a fresh approach?

Top tips to avoid viral fatigue:

• Engage with underground off-line cultures like crafting, zine culture, and secret dining experiences to track the new waves of cool. Utilize this knowledge to stay innovative.

• Google + is gaining momentum rapidly but is still the home place for a lot of digital and social media gurus. Watch how that space changes and how it is used, G+ will be one to watch for 2012.

• Tap into the next set of key influencers in any sector, the ones who are rising stars in the blogosphere and Twitter. Watch them before they tip to see how social media is being used just below the crest of the wave.

• Creativity is still key to innovation so keep your creative juices flowing as much as possible.

Screen Culture (via Trendwatching.com) is not predicted to lessen in 2012, rather, the opposite. More screens and tablets are in production, and our lifestyle of constant reach continues to expand. So, if social media culture is set to stay, what is the next big thing, and are we over the viral now?

If you’re more obsessed by great creative campaigns rather than the ‘next big thing’ you can see the best results by briefing the Creative Services Exchange.  

Jo Gifford is one of our new contributors and a creative on the Exchange, a designer, writer, blogger and founder of Cherry Sorbet Creative. Working primarily in the beauty, fashion and lifestyle industries her work spans graphic design for print and web, social media management and training, copywriting and editorial for on and offline publications. You will find her blogging as Dexterous Diva, on Twitter both as Dexterous Diva and Cherry Sorbet, and on Linked In.

During 2011 blog page views across blur Group’s network more than doubled. We know that they’re a sought-out information source for those working in the creative industries, those using them and people looking for that different perspective on new startups, the latest art, marketing must-haves, design desires and a view on the latest trends. 

So it seemed obvious to us, that the time was now ripe to open up our public blogs in keeping with our founding philosophy and invite our creatives on the Exchange to contribute on a regular basis. We’ll still write ourselves, we’ll still have some great guest bloggers, but our regular contributors are a selection of great writers, expert marketers and creative agencies from the Exchange.

They’re going to bring you the latest advice, campaigns they’ve worked on, campaigns they’ve admired, trends, tips and techniques. Opinions, insight and new takes on the industry around us. All designed to help your creative and marketing endeavors and put you at the forefront of the marketing revolution that blur Group’s spearheading.

We’ll be introducing them through this week so be sure to check out all our blogs at blur Marketing, blur Designs, innovatrs and b-uncut. Make sure you leave your comments, tell us what else you’d like to read about, and if you don’t already – follow us on Twitter so that you can always hear about the latest blogs.

blur Group has built its business on social marketing, we’ve led on corporate blogging to underpin that strategy, we’ve redefined crowdsourcing. Enjoy the combination and put time aside each day to read some more!

Look out for blogs from Jo Gifford, Tonya Walker, Philip Morley, Brooke Hart and Paperboat Creative this week. 

If you’d like to blog for us then join the Exchange; and if you’d like experts to write your corporate blog  then submit your brief now!

We’ve already shared with you blur Group’s review of 2011 and our vision for creative services in 2012. But as it’s that time of year when we dust off the crystal balls, run riot with our runes, draw lines between planets, here’s our thoughts on what different areas of the business might see in 2012.

Sales

For a long time sales folks have talked about the idea of personal engagement with the customer. Now that we have so many social tools available the idea that we are selling to a business, rather than the person within that business, just doesn’t apply. Social media is as important for sales as it is for marketing: it’s the fastest way to understand what really makes someone tick. Our job in sales is to make our propositions and proposals appropriate for the individual as well as for the corporate entity. That means much tighter engagement, making full use of our CRM systems to capture all the information about that person and their needs, and managing them through the entire process. Even if they don’t become a customer immediately, we need to understand how to make them one in the future.

Finance

Not surprisingly given our cloud life and love, we see financial systems moving increasingly to the cloud in 2012. For small businesses a cloud-based accounts package opens up not just the obvious benefits of no software to maintain, but makes it much easier to have an entire function managed remotely. Why pay for a financial controller in your office when you can work with one remotely using the cloud as your common platform. It makes outsourcing more valid – and not just for small businesses. Overweight finance functions should be a thing of the past – and 2012 could see the start of that. Finally, who’s to say that in just the same way that blur Group has revolutionized the provision of creative services through its cloud-based b2b Exchange, why shouldn’t finance services be sourced and delivered through this sort of Exchange too?

HR

It’s no coincidence that we’ve seen briefs for social media campaigns coming not just from marketing heads, but from HR directors this year.  Internal communications has often been under the auspices of the HR team and now social media is falling into this function. As businesses become increasingly involved in social media at all points bringing the human and social elements together is an obvious marriage. For negative issues, it’s vital that the business understands when an employee is having an impact on brand sentiment. And recently we’ve seen how this can have further connotations with ownership of corporate followers under question. For the positive, it’s vital to get every employee behind the brand and able to determine who is the best person to respond and engage as the conversations about your business increase.

IT

Again we have to mention the cloud as the place where increasingly your IT is happening. As apps become prevalent, as software is nearly always delivered as a service rather than in a box to your office, the cloud is facilitating rapid development and deployment. Collaboration and corroboration become increasingly a part of our way of working: some of the most successful IT businesses of recent years involve sharing of data and process – all aided by the rise of cloud computing. The other way that we see IT developing is increased use of crowdsourcing, – again the cloud makes this more likely to happen, starting with companies who improve the basic offerings of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. We see that there will be a more sophisticated developers’ exchange emerging to provide a crowdsourced solution to IT development.

Innovation 

Innovation and ideas will not just be functions within the organization. It’s not new for 2012, we know that some large businesses have had their own ideas input from complex patents to fun products for some time. But what we do expect to see increase is more innovation and creativity specialists – falling outside traditional npd areas, being independent of the product marketing function and really having that external viewpoint to making the inside business more powerful.

Marketing

Over 2011 we’ve blogged extensively on the future of advertising, the changes we’re seeing in the marketing team makeup, the way that businesses buy creative as we launched the Creative Services Exchange and the increasing use of mobile and social to reach customers. So we won’t rehash too much: but our biggest expectations are that 2012 is going to see a much more scientific marketing function. Data isn’t just about consumer profiling any more: the digital world means we see what’s happening as it’s happening and need the power to make those decisions based on that insight. Decisions that will influence revenue generation. Marketing and technology will move ever closer inside the business: creativity will be the outsourced element.

Tell us what you think: 2012 isn’t going to start with the world in ideal economic conditions, so every business function must deliver in the leanest fashion possible. That’s why we anticipate growth on the Creative Services Exchange: the perfect example of cloud, data, creativity coming together to build value for businesses around the world. As we said through our 2011 campaign – there is no alternative but to use the Exchange

Happy 2012!

In the immortal words of our founder and CEO Philip Letts, “We launched the Creative Services Exchange intending to stop the debate about the future of advertising and start delivering that future.” And this year we’ve done just that. Here’s what you need to know about blur in 2011.

News in Briefs

• Our global reach means that 20% of our briefs are from the US and 30% of total brief values come from the Americas. With continued growth outside Europe, blur Group appointed a worldwide head of sales and is planning offices in new regions.
• This year, businesses in every continent briefed the Exchange.
• Average brief value tripled through the year with briefs ranging from $1,000 to $150,000.
• We saw a move towards mobile and digital campaigns and the life sciences sector was particularly active in both Europe and the US.
• A pleasantly surprising number of major brands have already adopted our new model, as well as small and medium enterprises.

Creative Growth

• 2011 saw the number of creatives double to over 13,250 from 130 countries around the world
• The majority of these new creatives were agencies who recognized that the Exchange removed all their new business overheads and gave them access to brands they’d never reach otherwise.

Time and Money

• We launched our proprietary trading technology which lowered the cost of marketing projects by an average of 30% and in many cases 50%.
• The technology also reduced the time from brief to pitch selection to less than 7 days on average.
• Using the Exchange is now a great experience. Customers have their own live dashboards and collaboration between creatives and customers is run online through to project completion.
• What’s more, all data is compiled to give an industry overview of key marketing trends.

The Agency Problem
Philip Letts, founder and CEO at blur Group says, “The overriding story we have heard from customers and the market is that the traditional model of finding creative does not reflect the web 2.0 world where agility, transparency and cost-effectiveness matter.” Marketers want to run multi-channel campaigns and pivot their plans in an instant. In this flexible new world, behemoth agencies just aren’t responsive enough.

2012
We expect to have over 1,000 customers in 2012, briefing what will be 25,000 creatives. We’re creating the new generation of b2b exchanges to benefit businesses of every size and in every sector. Excited? So are we.

You can be part of the future too when you brief the Exchange.

In the five blogs of blur Group we write about what excites, dismays and interests us. As the year draws to a close, let’s take a look back at the most-read blog posts of 2011 – what do they say about you, dear reader?

In the blur Group blog, you looked to us for amusement and advice. The most popular post of the year was April Fool’s Day 2011: Did you spot the hoaxes? We lined up the most convincing tricks on the web – did you fall for them? Crowdsourcing creativity is still a new concept, so it follows that the next two most popular pieces explained how blur can work for you. They were Web 3.0 is all about data, and so is the Creative Services Exchange, closely followed by Producing the Perfect Creative Brief.

Over in blur Designs, you favoured posts with collections of design. You loved the Royal Wedding Dress, our round-up of the possible looks Kate might choose. Our post about the iconic Google Doodle got the second-highest number of hits. We’re glad to see that you’re as obsessed with Apple as we are, because the third most-read post was The Future of Apple Designs, a speculative look at the innovations we’d like to see.

The Royal Wedding was crucial in blur Marketing too. The most popular post was The Ultimate Brand: The Royal Wedding, in which we looked at how the royal family might market itself in the future. Our advice on writing a Killer Slogan was the next most-read piece, just ahead of our look at the week’s Top Viral Video, which involved conductive citrus.

In Innovatrs, our most popular post was Innovation in Music: Key trends and the growth of digital. Clearly, our thoughts were worth taking a break from your iPod! A good entrepreneur learns from those who have gone before. So we’re not surprised that our Smoothie Operators analysis of the success of Innocent and our cautionary tale about Sony Betamax were the next most popular posts.

Meanwhile, you b-uncut readers reminded us why statistics can be fun. You read our tribute to Andreas Gursky’s colossal photographs more than anything else. But the next most popular piece featured Willard Wigan who makes miniature art inside pins! The third most-read post was similarly zany, about Gilbert and George’s urethra-themed exhibition.

Thanks for following us this year! Don’t stop now, because we’re finishing the year in style. We’re running the Alternative Advent Calendar over in blur Designs, and today marked the start of our series of innovative gifts in Innovatrs. And if you need blog copy, our creatives can help you out! Brief the Exchange.

1)   You might not be as obsessed with Twitter as we are. But do you know which superstar has the most followers? Lady Gaga, with close to 17 million.

2)   Which bank won the Marketing Week award for best re-brand? That’d be Santander.

3)   Gorillas appeared in which epic price comparison ad? You too can be epic if you use MoneySupermarket.

4)   How many creatives are there on the Creative Services Exchange? 13,245.

5)   Which airline took a cue from the Bond films in its sexy new campaign? Virgin Atlantic, watch it here.

6)   Which British brand hit half a million views with its ‘Walk of Shame’ campaign? Surprisingly, Harvey Nichols! Check it out.

7)   What’s the most watched YouTube video of all time? Charlie bit my finger, with 397 million views. Ouch.

8)   Reading this on an iPad? Which Finnish iPad app teaches kids guitar? Wildchords makes chords fun, read more about it here.

9)   Which international consumer goods company has just launched a media buying and planning initiative? Unilever is reviewing its media agencies. Exciting.

10)   Last week, President Sarkozy attended the opening of which internet behemoth’s office in Paris? Google, naturellement.

11)   Human-flesh search is the eerie name for crowdsourced vigilantism in which country? China. Read this New York Times article about the freaky phenomenon here.

12)   How many people log onto Facebook every day? More than 400 million, according to Facebook.

13)   A song by Slow Moving Millie featured in the tear-jerking Christmas ad of which store? John Lewis produced the £5m video ad.

14)   Katy Perry and David Beckham appeared in a blockbuster ad for which sporting brand? Adidas featured them along with many other stars in the All In ad.

15)   Fill in the blank: “The Man Your Man Could _____ Like” The Old Spice viral ad was called “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.”

16)   How can you save time and money? Brief the Exchange.

You must be busy

1)   You might not be as obsessed with Twitter as we are. But do you know which superstar has the most followers?

2)   Which bank won the Marketing Week award for best re-brand?

3)   Gorillas appeared in which epic price comparison ad?

4)   How many creatives are there on the Creative Services Exchange?

5)   Which airline took a cue from the Bond films in its sexy new campaign?

6)   Which British brand hit half a million views with its ‘Walk of Shame’ campaign?

7)   What’s the most watched YouTube video of all time?

8)   Reading this on an iPad? Which Finnish iPad app teaches kids guitar?

9)   Which international consumer goods company has just launched a media buying and planning initiative?

10)  Last week, President Sarkozy attended the opening of which internet behemoth’s office in Paris?

11)   Human-flesh search is the eerie name for crowdsourced vigilantism in which country?

12)   How many people log onto Facebook every day?

13)    A song by Slow Moving Millie featured in the tear-jerking Christmas ad of which store?

14)    Katy Perry and David Beckham appeared in a blockbuster ad for which sporting brand?

15)     Fill in the blank: “The Man Your Man Could _____ Like”

 Check back tomorrow for answers!

Today, #blur is trending on Twitter

We didn’t steal Blur’s hashtag, we just happen to a share a name with the band. Unfortunately, real hashtag hijacking happens quite frequently. A company can create a hashtag, but they can’t control how it’s used. This makes it harder to manage brand identity. Qantas ran into this problem last month with a Twitter competition called #qantasluxury. The airline was going through a period of bad PR after grounding their entire fleet following strikes. They ran a competition asking Twitter followers to nominate their favourite thing on a luxury flight, to win a pair of pajamas and a first-class amenity kit. Instead, users tweeted their Qantas complaints, like “Qantas Luxury means sipping champagne on your corporate jet while grounding the entire airline, country, customers & staff.” The promotional hashtag became a platform for dissent, and Qantas couldn’t do a thing about it.

It’s almost impossible to legally regulate Twitter. You can sue a particular user for a Tweet, as Jon Krawczynski found out. But many Twitter users are anonymous and can be widely heard, making it easy to break gagging orders. In Britain it’s possible to take out a so-called super-injunction, which makes mentioning a particular topic, or the injunction itself, illegal. In May, Ryan Giggs took out a super-injunction about an extra-marital affair with Imogen Thomas. Twitter users named and shamed him, followed by MP John Hemming who pointed out “With about 75,000 people having named Ryan Giggs on Twitter it’s obviously impractical to imprison them all.” Giggs then unsuccessfully tried to sue Twitter. Twitter rendered an expensive super-injunction obsolete – a fascinating example of how it’s reshaping our legal landscape.

It will be interesting to see whether the law will shift to incorporate Twitter, like it did domain names. In 1995 America passed the AntiCybersquatting Consumer Protection Act to prevent unscrupulous characters from pre-emptively buying the domain names of famous people or companies with the intent of exploiting them or selling them at inflated prices. There’s also a policy called UNRP to regulate domain names and arbitrate disputes. These legal structures were created out of a need for regulation. Right now, there aren’t any such protections on Twitter – but for how long? In the meantime, you can get a sizzling Twitter campaign next week if you brief the Exchange today.

It seems that there is one big area of the business which could benefit from efficiency savings – according to the survey to the tune of £615m (that’s nearly $1bn). And that function is marketing.

It’s not really about the cost, but about the way it’s bought. We’ve talked before about how decisions are made in marketing that may not have the same scrutiny as other outsourcing choices. Quite simply, when it’s either agency or in-house then the spend is going to be determined by one of those two pots. But if there’s a third way…

You may not be one of the biggest companies, or even if you are, there’s one thing that’s for sure. Making the way you buy marketing services more efficient is going to have a major impact on your bottom line.

Here’s the ways that we think marketing procurement is currently inefficient, and how it can work in the new world that the Creative Services Exchange delivers: it’s worth putting these into a spreadsheet and try to work out how much you could save by switching your marketing procurement approach.

1. Time to select. It’s easy when you’re using your regular supplier – you’ve already done the ‘beauty parade’. But if you’re looking for something new then drawing up the longlist and shortlist of pitching agencies has a huge time cost. How many hours and what has that meant to your business in financial terms?

2. The pitch process. Another time and opportunity cost. You need to be on hand to answer all those questions, to review, to sift from long to shortlist. Then you need to travel to those processes.

3. Retainers. There’s no doubt they’re less a given than once upon a time. Partly led by the multi-channel approach meaning that one agency is not always the solution. But also because people are starting to question just what it covers. But if you’re still paying a retainer you really need to understand what the return on that particular investment is. It may be zero.

4. Markups. In the days when digital wasn’t in the marketer’s vocabulary, an agency bill would have a random markup factor applied on all external costs, normally print or media. Almost understandable in that most of us don’t really have the skills to do print proofing or even want to incur the time/cost of that process. Now there is less external production but markups still happen.

5. Think of a number. Let’s be straightforward. Agencies actually make the money on the dull stuff. Margins are big on those regular projects that can be given to the most junior designer, to the cheapest production shop, with the least creative input.

6. Expenses. We’re at the height of the Soho/Madison Avenue lunch and party season so it’s always worth remembering that the hangover doesn’t come free.

How does all this change when you start using the Creative Services Exchange?

1.  We manage the selection, handle all the pitch questions and deliver the top pitches to you. The process is streamlined, online. So there’s no time or travel costs for you.

2. You set the budget. This may seem to be our most labored point, but in the end this is the difference between wasting £615million and getting value-based marketing. If you continue to rely on your suppliers to price a project, you will continue to overpay. Of course part of the way that we can give our customers 30% cost savings each time is because our creatives are not carrying huge overheads. We know the idea of offshoring to save costs in other business processes, but quite often a cost-effective option is in a country you’ve never thought of, or equally just down the road from you. Pay for the creative, don’t pay for the sofa in reception.

3. Transparency. Following on from 2, you’ll realize that when you see everything that’s going on you’ll be aware if anything appears that doesn’t make financial sense. As our trading platform becomes ever more function rich we’ll have even more reports available to you that show just what’s happening. Oh and we don’t buy lunch for you, so you’re not buying it for us.

4. Speed. We often go from brief to pitch to project start within a week. Yet it can still be closer to a quarter for some campaigns to kick off in the traditional way. That means you lose the momentum and often means you’ve lost the market leadership by the time you go live. Whatever the reasons, this opportunity cost is massive. Fast turnaround is efficient in all sorts of ways.

5. Efficiency. Although our approach is loved by marketing execs, using the Exchange as a single supplier and as the company’s payment agent makes it a popular choice for procurement execs too.

6. Creative wins. As one respondent to the survey said  “drive real savings without sacrificing the vital creativity and innovation that effective marketing demands”. When you can put other concerns to one side, you’ll find that creativity is the winner in the new way of doing things.

It may seem a little early for 2012 resolutions, but why not make this one now. You can save your business money, without sacrificing quality or creativity. Brief the Exchange now.

Today, we’re taking a look at the organizations using crowdsourcing to solve really knotty problems

Interestingly, we’re seeing a lot of successful free crowdsourcing in the scientific realm. You’ve probably heard about how video gamers solved the folding pattern of a protein. Scientists at the University of Washington made the process of deduction into a game, and the resulting model will help with AIDS research. This is volunteer crowdsourcing, whereby many people donate small amounts of time and effort to grind through mammoth tasks – like cataloguing enormous quantities of data. In this way amateurs have helped professional scientists categorize photos of galaxies and annotate images of TB cells.

Crowdsourced volunteering has helped research into the ancient world. In the 19^th century, British archaeologists discovered a stunningly well-preserved rubbish dump in Egypt near the city of Oxyrhynchus. Because of extreme dryness, half a million pieces of papyrus had survived more than a millennium. Unfortunately, transcribing the hand-written and fragmented papyri was time-consuming. After decades of work, Oxford crowdsourced the labour on a site called Ancient Lives. Visitors help with the transcription by measuring fragments’ margins and marking and identifying letters. They don’t need to understand Ancient Greek, they just match the handwriting with images of letters. So far, participants have transcribed over four million documents for translation. They’ve found lost comedies, legal documents and lyric poetry.

We see how crowdsourcing can be an effective way to tackle tasks that require time rather than expertise. But it’s also possible to crowdsource genuine scientific breakthrough using sites like InnoCentive.com. InnoCentive works like the Creative Services Exchange, supplying scientific innovation rather than creative ideas. Corporations, government agencies and research institutions all submit their thorny scientific problems to the site. Bright, qualified ‘solvers’ read them and brainstorm solutions. Right now, the Consumer Electronics Association is looking for a way to recycle cathode ray tube glass and the BeyondPolio initiative wants to lower polio vaccine costs. They pose their questions to a high-quality crowd of Solvers and offer a monetary reward to whoever solves their problem. Take a look at the ‘I’m a Solver’ series on the blog to get an idea of the crowd calibre and read some success stories. Good money and tricky challenges attract bright minds and innovative ideas. We call this model crowdsourcing 2.0.

Dell and Starbucks went wrong because they used the volunteer crowdsourcing method. They had a low-quality crowd made up of their customers and no monetary incentive to encourage serious thought. Their crowdsourcing didn’t turn up the next big thing, but it did make the companies appear customer-friendly, so they weren’t a dead loss. To find a really innovative idea, they should have crowdsourced the blur way.

Of course, it’s not too late for you! We’ll get you top-notch creative thinking at a better price than going directly to an agency. Brief the Exchange today.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX2Gd-kqV5s

Best of all, the half-hour show was free to all comers. Thousands of young people lined the north and south banks of the Thames for the show, buzzing in different languages, smoking and drinking in the streets. It was a festival atmosphere in central London, which Nokia surely intended. Deadmau5 makes the kind of music your mother might describe as “just noise, darling,” and a free show tends to summon students.

The performance reached great heights because Nokia is in deep trouble. In February Nokia leaked a memo in which the CEO starkly laid out the problems facing the company. Now known as the “burning platform” speech, the memo compared Nokia to a man standing on a burning oil platform debating whether to jump into the sea. You can read the entire text here. Nokia’s lost market share and has fallen behind its competitors. Android and Apple are the new centres of innovation so few developers create apps for Windows phones. The Lumia 800 is Nokia’s last hope to reposition itself in the global phone market. A tablet is planned for next year in direct competition with the iPad. If these devices fail, Nokia probably will too.

Never mind that the speakers on our side of the river cut off for a few minutes partway through Deadmau5’ performance, prompting boos and more than a few shouts of “Buy an iPhone!” and “Should’ve gone to Samsung!” Newspapers haven’t recorded the audience’s disapproval when the concert’s corporate undertones peeked through –like at the end of the show, when a spinning Lumia 800 appeared at the end. The concert was a key part of Nokia’s redemption. The show makes a great viral video and it’s easy to write about. The format of the show was entirely different, the first of its kind in London. It reflects Nokia’s attempts to change its game and build a new platform in the world of smartphones.

So far, the Lumia 800 has performed well enough. Reviews have been favourable, though not ecstatic and it’s too early to see whether the phone can save Nokia. On that note, need an innovative idea for a big event? Let us help, Brief the Exchange today.

Human Media makes it possible for a company to offer products or services that meet the clients’ expectations. How? Simply because the clients realize that they have someone to connect with at the other end of the channel, they find common means to communicate and be listened to.

This is the first Friday for some time that there’s no new video ad from blur Group. Last  week  ‘oneupmanship’ marked the end of our no alternative campaign.

Suitcase.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjcYE0pB7QI

Holidays should be relaxing, and you deserve some time off. But you need a campaign a week before you fly and your creatives are lounging on a beach. How to good ideas fast and produce a fully-fledged promotion before you go away?

Squeeze.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=neCCwMtFav0

Big events bring big publicity and it’s vital to pull them off perfectly. Sometimes, though, an unexpected cut in budget can scupper your grand designs. You don’t want to cancel the event but your previous plans just aren’t workable now. But how can you get quality ideas with your squeezed resources?         

Antique:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_oJ7oRnu5Q

If you read our blogs you understand the importance of social media and digital marketing. It’s only natural to want to grow into the social media ecosystem with Facebook campaigns and Twitter promos, with a great viral video to boot. But your creatives don’t share your vision. What to do when your team would bring tears to Ed Balls’ eyes?

Damn.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyHmt8XTxG4

Good ad space affords a great opportunity for you to reach new customers, but we understand it can be hard to come by. Sometimes, your perfect slot comes up at very short notice. But your usual creative agency is busy with other clients. How to acquire fabulous content now?

Broke.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl_-9id5Ozk

Key projects can go off track for reasons beyond your control. Perhaps your target audience shifted, or your creative team failed to come up with a truly innovative idea. Of course, by the time you realize you need a change of plan you’ve almost exhausted your budget. How to avoid meltdown?

If you’ve experienced the panic, you know. There’s no alternative. Brief the Exchange.

This week the number of creatives on blur Group’s Creative Services Exchange will pass the 13,000 mark.

Yes, there is value to the creative. There is a feeling that Crowdsourcing is great for those wanting say a design project, but not so great for those delivering it.

It’s why blur Group pioneered Crowdsourcing 2.0: differentiating from the mass response to miniscule projects. Showing that taking an expert, managed approach, there’s a way to benefit from the power of the Crowd for significant marketing projects and not just the ubiquitous logo design contests.

The creative benefits from exposure to this greater variety of business and ultimately, from the greater potential for business.

It’s the philosophy behind the launch of the Creative Services Exchange. It’s about brokering transactions: exchanging creative requirement for creative response. It’s a level playing field. We’re democratizing creativity. Here’s how it benefits creative professionals:

1) Pitches are won based on creative flair, not the offices you’re running them from. When the process from brief to pitch is conducted online, you’re evaluated purely on the basis of your experience and the quality of your work, not on the plushness of your sofas. The customer is not going to be swung by your espresso machine, but by just how good you are for them.

2) Creatives on the Exchange benefit from community as well as new business exposure. We deliberately made the Exchange community-focused from the perspective of the Creative. That way you can have the social interaction with relevant peers that makes the virtual world  as professionally stimulating as any office environment.

3) Brief managers support the creatives as they develop winning pitches. They manage the process for both customer and creative. It ensures that everyone who’s suitable gets the best opportunity. Even with a Crowd of 13,000 no-one is anonymous. The final decision is down to the customer, but we want that playing field to be level right to that decision point. We’ve developed pitch tools to help. We have frameworks to help your business develop. Being on the Exchange can develop your skills and portfolio.

4) You only pitch to the point you would for any newbiz pitch: you don’t have to produce final work. Most of the anti-crowdsourcing sentiment focuses on the spec work debate. And the fact that earnings per annum can be calculated in cents as a result. We can’t say that you can coast your way to a winning pitch: but we expect the pitch to be creds and concept, not final deliverables. In other words, it’s what most agencies would expect to do to win business: it’s just we’ve reduced your overheads in winning that business.

5) You have a relationship with the customer. You may not choose to meet with them: when you consider that you may be a creative in Singapore winning some business in Sweden, it’s not altogether feasible. It’s why we provide a secure collaboration platform. But you interact daily and we help with that interaction when necessary. And many of our creatives have gone on to further projects from an initial success.

6) You focus on your creative work. The brief is your newbiz opportunity: one that we’ve invested marketing dollars in getting – not you.

It’s important to blur Group that all creatives get the chance to focus on Creativity – whether it’s design, marketing, art, writing or innovation. Our philosophy is about blurring boundaries, and opening up opportunities.

In time we expect that 13,000 will just be a tiny proportion of creatives benefiting from the Exchange process. Gradually businesses will realize that they want that freedom to choose the best creative option for their work, whether it turns out to be their incumbent agency provider, or some smart new talent many miles away. And to make that choice through a single platform, a seamless process from brief to delivery. Web technologies and cloud computing have all contributed to this capability to open up creative sourcing. If everyone is in the Crowd, there’ll be no concept of good or bad Crowdsourcing. Creativity will win out.  And the selection of that creative will be a democratic process. That can only be good for everyone.

Users were outraged by the introduction of Promoted content on Twitter last year. Advertisers can pay to have their accounts, tweets or trends ‘promoted’ so they’ll crop up at the top of suggested accounts and trending topics. Users can’t avoid the content. Disgruntled Tweeters predicted the platform would descend into advertising hell but it seems to working rather well so far. As Twitter’s CEO said recently, “That thing is working better than we could have ever hoped.” The ads are much less obtrusive than Facebook’s banner ads or Youtube’s inescapable video spots. Balance will be important here because users will be moved to fits of incandescent rage if their feeds fill up with promoted content.

Wendy’s showed us this month that content remains king, promoted or not. To promote their new burger the sneaky marketers created an account called @GirlBehindSix with no obvious affiliation to Wendy’s. The account was billed as a 140 character game show. Users completed tasks and answered questions to win fun prizes like mopeds, upscale headphones and cash money. The account was only promoted for one day yet gained 1,000 new followers every day for a month. Followers had no idea Wendy’s was behind the account until a few days ago. It turned out that Girl Behind Six referred to the sixth open spot on the Wendy’s burger menu now filled by the W burger.

Speaking of content, we’ve found that Hootsuite is the most effective way to manage lots of content across multiple platforms. It’s compatible with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and WordPress to name a few. It’s got RSS integration so you can feed your blog onto Twitter automatically. We particularly like the Ow.ly system for shrinking URL’s which lets us track how many people clickthrough on the links we post. Although we’d recommend Hootsuite as the best way to manage a lot of content, do please make sure you know what you’re doing! The Red Cross got into trouble when a ‘social media specialist’ made a Hootsuite error and posted a tweet about #gettngslizzerd on the Red Cross’ Twitter rather than her personal account.

And if you need support in managing your followers and followees, try Formulist for personalized, self-updating Twitter lists. The tool has a highly specified search engine, so you can find food bloggers, or Nascar fans or Sheffield residents, then compile them into lists. At that point, the lists will update themselves, so when another Sheffield dweller joins Twitter, they’ll show up in your list. You can also find the hubs of influence in your areas of interest. Handy. Formulist can also help you spring clean your account by eliminating the people you follow who, in an unforgivable breach of Twetiquette, don’t follow you back.

We hope you found this interesting and helpful. We also hope you’re following us! And if you want to do something extraordinary on Twitter, brief the Exchange.