Tag / interview

by YannigRoth

Discussion With LEGO’s Community Strategist, Yun Mi Antorini

Yun Mi Antorini

LEGO, one of the most creative and loved brands in the world, attributes a big part of its success to its thriving fan community. Almost 10 million Facebook fans, over 180,000 Twitter followers or a 10,000+ member LEGO Ideas community show that the brand and its product have huge traction among kids and adults alike (watch this TED talk to have a short impression of the phenomenon). The company has not only recognized the power of this fanbase, realized how valuable it is, but they actively encourage its development and look for its well-being – from a passive observer to an active promoter.

I’ve already blogged about community management in a crowdsourcing setting, now here’s an interview of LEGO’s “Community Strategist,” Yun Mi Antorini, whose job is – basically- to make that community happy (how cool is that?). Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

“Crowdsourcing Works Because of the Freshness and Naivety,” says Santawen

rabah-brahimiIn my quest to better understand creative crowdsourcing participants, I recently interviewed Santawen alias Rabah Brahimi, a French filmmaker, director and graphic designer. Santawen often participates in online contests on websites like eYeka (he was features as creator of the month of June 2012) and took some time to sit down and chat about his participation in online video contests.

I don’t have any professional equipment, just an affordable camera and a lot of free time.

His views about the evolving world of advertising and the advent of creative crowdsourcing were particularly interesting, as he worked numerous years as an agency creative. Here are some excerpts of our conversation. Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

Co-Creation in the Banking Industry: Crédit Agricole’s Alpha Project

tugdual-de-latour-alpha-agence-credit-agricole

On December 13th 2010, the Parisian branch of Crédit Agricole, one of France’s leading banks (whose co-creation efforts I already covered here in French) announced the launch of the Alpha Project. By creating a physical space in the center on Paris, the co-creation project is meant to invite consumers in a physical store, to let them suggest and test new ideas and to eventually co-create the bank-client relationship. This is an interview of Tugdual de Latour, the manager who handles the Alpha project since the early days.

I met Tugdual in the Alpha Agency, and asked him what results the experiment has provided so far. His 2-and-a-half years experience as a co-creation manager prove to be invaluable for all those who are curious about customer involvement. Here are his answers about running a co-creation experiment in the banking industry, about the good and bad sides of customer involvement, and the future of the Alpha Project. Continue reading →

by YannigRoth

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

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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 →