Peperami crowdsourced TV ad 'first of a new breed'

Having recently split with Lowe, their agency of 15 years, Peperami opted to source the creative idea for this ad, not from an agency, but from the "people".

The latest ad was conceived and scripted by Rowland Davies, an ex-creative director from Germany who submitted his idea with Kevin Baldwin, a copywriter from London. Their joint effort beat 1185 entries and won the US$10 000 (about R73 000) prize facilitated by crowdsourcing platform, Idea Bounty. The 30-second ad is currently airing on ITV1 during Coronation Street.

Crowdsourcing supporters

Peperami's new agency, BPL, are vocal supporters of crowdsourcing, despite the present danger to their business model (agencies who flog ideas as their bread and butter have reason to feel threatened by new cheaper models for doing the same thing).

"Innovative, hybrid working methods like this will open the door for the lower cost smaller agencies that are used to collaborating successfully with other agencies." says Emma Hughes, the managing director of BPL.

Noam Buchalter, marketing manager of Peparami, said: "A large proportion of submissions were from experienced, creative professionals and being the first crowd-sourcing project for the brand, we couldn't have asked for a better response."

Quirk eMarketing, the folks behind the Idea Bounty crowdsourcing platform say this is just a small taste of what is possible with this new tool.

"We have been beta testing Idea Bounty for over a year now and lots of big brands have used it in various ways," says Rob Stokes, CEO of Quirk. "Yes, Idea Bounty can be used to create ads more cost-effectively, but it can also be used to harvest great ideas from a global creative community and can solve virtually any marketing problem."

Major brands

Since Idea Bounty opened to briefs in November 2008, more than 13 major brands have outsourced to the online community to crack open marketing problems. Clients have included BMW, Levi's, WWF and Unilever. At present, Chevrolet has a brief posted on Idea Bounty. All briefs to date have seen a successful result with the best ideas run as real campaigns.

A major bank has used Idea Bounty to generate ideas to persuade more people to bank online and a leading beer brand has asked the community to come up with a theme and slogan to unite all their football sponsorship activities.

Nic Ray, who runs both Idea Bounty and Quirk eMarketing in the UK says, "There are differences between Idea Bounty and other crowdsourcing platforms. While Idea Bounty is open to anyone to submit ideas, the greater majority of people in our 12 000 strong international community are professional creatives by day. The ideas are therefore generally of a very high standard and well explained."

View the Peperami Ad online - www.viddler.com/explore/ideabounty/videos/66/