Crowdsourcing creativity for business with the blur Group

While crowdsourcing has almost become a household word its perception as an advertiser’s  novelty, suitable only for advertising mobile phones, is gradually being eroded.  More and more organisations are realising the possibilities of crowdsourcing as a business tool and one organisation, the blur Group, is using an innovative approach.

Since the group was established in 2006 major international  brands have been signing up to this innovative creative crowdsourcing business.

So far SEGA, Yell.com and Polo Ralph Lauren, CBS Outdoor, PaddyPower.com, CNN and others have signed up to the Group’s Creative Services Exchange, to crowdsource talent from a pool of over 10,000 people in the creative industry.

The Creative Services Exchange works in a similar way to a crowdfunding organisation.  A company submits briefs through the blur Group’s website.  The Group then reviews and refines the brief and, with the company, publishes it to its collection of creatives.  A creative can be a group or person with expertise in design, digital, advertising, branding, copywriting, social media, etc.  The creatives then pitch for the brief and a winning proposal is chosen by the company.

Speaking about the process the founder of the blur Group, Philip Letts said, “The use of the Creative Services Exchange by brands like this for projects of significant value validates our model as the new and future way to source marketing or creative projects and campaigns.”

According to the company this method of content generation is growing. Today the London-based company announced that each day two new briefs are submitted to the site and, in spite of the recession, the average brief’s budget has increased by 50% since 2010.