Category / EN : People

by YannigRoth

“The video contest space is getting very competitive” – An interview of Brett Slater

BrettSlater

In my “quest” to understand crowdsourcing in creative industries better, I would like to share another interview of an avid participant. After interviewing Jared Cicon a.k.a. the Video Contest King, here’s an interview of Brett Slater, a successful video contest participant and the founder of Slater’s Garage Ads & Audio. The tagline of Slater’s Garage is “Helping Your Small Business Find Its Voice” but Slater also works for big brands. How? By participating in crowdsourced video contests.

In a previous interview published on Entrepreneur.com, Brett indeed explained that crowdsourcing sites allowed him to gain exposure, cutting through geographic obstacles: “I live in Bangor, Maine. My work wouldn’t have been seen otherwise,” he explained. Contests on platforms like Poptent allow him to apply his talent to big brands (Brett writes the word brands with a capital B, Brands), not only local businesses. You can read more from him on his blog… or you can just read his interview below. Enjoy! Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

Where do creative crowdsourcing participants come from?

World map with pins representing interviewee locations

Image via ZeeMaps.com

My dissertation on creative crowdsourcing is going along well, and I’d like to share some findings in this post. This is not rocket-science, especially at this early phase of the work 😉 but I thought it would be insightful to share with readers interested in crowdsourcing. Basically, in my quest to find out who creative crowdsourcing participants really are, I analyzed 100+ interviews and was able to have fairly good data about their identity, origin and skills. In this post, let me share some findings about the countries of residence of creatives featured by different crowdsourcing platforms. I’d love to get your comments! Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

Just me and my bike (by @TheBikerist)

the bikerist thumbnail photos

The French cycling blog The Bikerist, which published portraits of Parisian cyclists, has recently released the photos that we did together, this summer. The photos are black & white and picture me with my very first racing bike, a Giant TCR-2, that I transformed into a commuting bike. I bought it second hand from a friend in Brittany, and transformed it step by step to make it a decent racing bike… before I bought a carbon bike.

Here’s what the text says:

He uses his bike every day to commute through Paris. Sportsman, good runner and cyclist, Yannig has had the luck to win races in France, Europe and the United States. He has several bikes, and chose to come [to the shooting] with his his original bike, and the stories associated to it, because it’s the bike that he started racing with in 2006, and with which he won his first race in Brittany in 2008.

A great set of photos, it’s an honor to be featured on such a high-quality blog, thanks The Bikerist! Check them out here… and if you’re a Paris-based cyclist willing to appear on The Bikerist, I’d be glad to put you in touch!

by YannigRoth

“The video contest landscape is like the Wild West” says an experienced participant

colt

Image via Gerard Elmore (vimeo)

I recently read a very interesting blog post from Jared Cicon (a.k.a. Video Contest King) about participation in crowdsourcing. Jared is a pioneer participant in video contests; he was one of the finalists of the first Doritos contest in 2006, and has taken (and won) a lot of contests since then. In his blog post “You…against the rest of the freelance world“, Jared shares his point of view about the current video contest lanscape. In his blog post, he says how much more competitive it is now: “what I’m hoping to demonstrate […] is how difficult it can be to freelance in our video world, and that we are clearly facing ongoing increased competition with every passing week“. As a consequence, he says, brands’ expectations are getting higher and it is therefore more difficult to win contests and earn money.

While it is always tempting to do those things that feel more ‘artisitic’ and which are more personally fulfilling, they must be balanced with content that the brands can use and that ‘get the money to pay the bills’

The crux of his blog post is “Evolve or die” – much like in the Wild West. I invite you to read the great post that he wrote on his blog if you want to find out more. After reading his insightful post on his blog, I thought it would be great to talk about crowdsourcing “from the other side”. He nicely took the time to answer a couple of questions about himself, his activity as a producer and about crowdsourced video production in general, and it’s my pleasure to publish the interview here on the blog. Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

David Butler, Coke’s VP of Design about crowdsourcing

David Butler_Coca-Cola Design+ Award from jovoto on Vimeo.

Check out this great video from the German crowdsourcing company jovoto. They’re holding a contest for Coke at the moment, and it’s a great interview of the company’s VP of Design, David Butler. I already mentioned him in a past blog post about the Freestyle Fountain, and if you’re interested in what he’s doing, check out Fast Company’s page (it’s a little bit outdated, but still relevant). This video interview is very insightful, especially regarding branding, design and crowdsourcing. I particularly like the emphasis that he puts on the cultural aspect of crowdsourcing i.e. peoples’ different approaches of the same problem across cultures. Comments are welcome!

by YannigRoth

Indian crowdsourcing-platform JadeMagnet bets on franchising to fuel its growth

portrait-in-street

Manik Kinra, on the left, is Chief Marketing Officer of Jade Magnet (via businesstoday.com)

Today, renown graphic design platforms include Crowdspring (USA), Creads (France), 99designs or Designcrowd (both Australia). An Indian challenger, who recently expanded to the US, the UK and is making inroads into the Middle-East, is pushing with a community of 15,000 creatives – and an innovative growth model. I talked to Manik Kinra, who founded Jade Magnet about two years ago with his friend Sitashwa Srivastava. Here are some excerpts of an interesting conversation about crowdsourcing, local cultural knowledge and ambitions for growth. Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

Hyve’s CEO Michael Bartl about using web communities and the long tail for market research

Those who follow this blog probably know that I like to relate the work of a Munich-based company called Hyve AG. The consultancy has worked with (mainly German) brands like BMW, Nivea, Henkel or Osram in co-creation efforts; building branded engagement platforms and setting up consumer communities to co-innovate with consumers. Hyve’s CEO, Dr. Michael Bartl, recently talked to Werben & Verkaufen (“promote & sell”) about web-based user communities and social relationships. Since the interview is in German, I thought I would translate some excerpts into English… Continue reading →