Crowds can run wild when unchecked. They don’t necessarily generate the best solutions that way for either wacky or serious creative briefs. The Client Critique however can be painfully unhelpful. This is when seasoned creative professionals really miss the suits. I do like the “gated” community, where only professionals are allowed in after a portfolio review. I don’t like them if they don’t let me in though. (I’ve been let in so far, just so you know).
In the middle of the wild and woolly crowd is where the action is. With only professionals playing the game tends to be the same. A good brief will yield only a handful of truly remarkable solutions with a lot of repetition and similarities. In a mixed crowd you’ll likely see a wider range of thinking, with a lot of “missteps”; ideas way off brief, or not fully hatched.
The more you fiddle with the crowdsource agency and filter it’s output (from the crowd to the client) the more it starts to look like a traditional shop, except for the size of the creative department. Is this the right direction?
