New online global marketplace helps agencies and creatives sell their ideas direct to clients
Anew online advertising marketplace launched today will enableadvertising agencies and creatives for the first time to showcase andoffer for sale creative concepts that have yet to see the light of dayas fully fledged ads.
www.creative-exchange.comoffers a one-stop, online creative resource that agencies can use tomarket creative ideas that might have been left “on the shelf” becausethey have not been used by clients.
The service can be used tosell existing concepts or repurpose creative ideas for differentclients and brands, not just in Australia but globally.
Buyersusing www.creative-exchange.com can browse through a range of creativeideas and choose concepts that are ideal for their own purposes.
www.creative-exchange.comalso helps agencies boost awareness of their creative talent – and alltheir other skills – among target audiences such as potential clients,the creative community, prospective employees and freelancers.
The service, which is a world-first Australian innovation, is fast,highly cost-effective and can work for agencies anywhere in the world,around the clock.
Describing www.creative-exchange.com as a long overdue aid for agenciesand clients, founder Vivian Greig (pictured) said the new portal had the capacityto offer ad agencies a real competitive advantage by using a new methodof “trading” creative ideas.
“It’s a fact of life in the advertising industry that, for variousreasons, many creative ideas never progress beyond the concept stageinto production as fully-fledged ads,” Greig said.
“However much creative departments object, their ideas can end up beingdiscarded because the client has decided on a different concept.
“But concepts that might not be right strategically, factually or intone for one client could be spot on for someone else – even overseas -which means there is almost certainly someone out there who will buythose unused ideas,” Greig said.
Potential buyers include clients who are between agencies, otheragencies (even within the same agency group locally andinternationally), conflict clients or advertisers who don’t want, orsee the need for, a full-service agency.
Endorsing the new resource, Belgiovane Williams Mackay associatecreative director Rocky Ranallo said: “This is a brilliant site for those ideas out there that really should be seen and for whateverreason have been shelved forever. It’s like a virtual bottom drawer.”
Managing director of creative agency One For All, Rob Willett, said: “Ican see creative-exchange.com changing the way agencies and clients dobusiness, to the advantage of both.
“Great ideas and work aren’t always the right solution for one clientbut may be for another. How many times have we seen great campaignsmothballed?
“Agencies pour enormous resources in to pitching to sometimes see thework only to see it wasted. creative exchange allow us to see what isout there and will be particularly valuable to creative agencies,” hesaid.
Greig said that www.creative-exchange.com also gave agencies theopportunity to grow revenues, and potentially profits, by selling ideasthey would normally have forgotten about, and by recouping valuablehead-hours spent on concepts that have not been used.
“The service also provides fast turn-around times, letting clients gettheir ads to market more quickly, which in turn means agencies can getpaid sooner,” Greig said.
Greig added that agencies could sell much more than just creative ideas on www.creative-exchange.com.
“Strategy documents, below-the-line material, even complete pitchesthat didn’t make it can be showcased on the site,” she said.
Among the many other products and services also available onwww.creative-exchange.com are music, such as unused jingles and otherdemos, research, stationery, logos, annual report and newsletterdesigns and web design.
In addition, agencies with any creative “downtime” can use it to workon new ideas for the clients they are targeting and display it to themvia www.creative-exchange.com
In addition, printers, production houses and dubbing and edit facilities can provide their services through the site.
Buyers of the www.creative-exchange.com service are charged asubscription fee, while sellers pay a small upload fee to display andon-sell agency material.
Copyright is retained by the seller.
Once the material – which can be anything from a PowerPoint document toa Mac art file or speaker rough – has been sold and paid forelectronically, www.creative-exchange.com simply forwards the funds tothe agency having deducted a commission fee.
It’s fast and easy.
In future, www.creative-exchange.com will also store work for internalagency use, and can create content libraries for inter-agency groupaccess.
“We tailor our service and have different levels of participation so wecan genuinely offer something for every agency, regardless of size orlocation,” Greig said.
6 Comments
Wow….mindblowing stuff…..it also has amazingly high potential for misuse…..how easy is it for an unscrupulous mind to see an idea on their website and tweak it without recognising the original creators….its happened for decades and who’s to say it wont happen now. I would be extremely hesitant to participate in this venture as I wouldn’t want to risk giving away hard earned ideas for free.
I’ve got a few hundred thousand bucks in unused inventory but the million $ questions for the site’s creators is….
Are there any guarantees that your idea wont be stolen (or stolen and slightly changed) by some unscrupulous visitor to the site? Who determines the price for the idea and what are the criterion used to evaluate this? And will you receive what you deem to be the right price for your idea and who determines that figure? And will you get paid?
The future hangs in balance over these questions. Till then Im keeping my bottom drawer locked.
In an ideal world, every brief is unique and so is its solution. Interesting to see if this ‘mix n match’ approach works. So if Im stuck on a brief for the Economist I can just log on and hopefully find an ad that works for me. Thats not impossible I suppose but to imagine that happening all the time is a bit of a stretch. We might just create a band of people who like Hallmark card makers create a bunch of ads for different product categories. Would love to see how this pans out.
One thing is for sure though…this will definitely work for scam ads as scam ads have extremely generic propositions most of the time. You know like window cleaners that clean windows or hair tonics that grow hair.
I think it’s a terrible idea and won’t catch on. Who in their right mind would put up ideas for all to see and cherry pick. Once you have seen it that’s it, you can rip it off and swear blind you never knew it had been done, because it didn’t run.
Honestly, what idiot thought this one up…?
As an industry, this should clearly concern us. Here are a few reasons why:
It completely undermines what we do.
How can we justify a large retainer to a client when they can log on and buy an idea for a quarter of the price?
We’ll be forced to compete on price, not quality.
It’s the stock photography of advertising.
One size doesn’t necessarily fit all, and it even undermines what we as an industry supposedly do. We find a truth about a certain product, a personality, or highlight a new feature and we explain that to the public. We don’t trick people into buying things, we entertain them.
What if this gets out?
Imagine this. If the public find out that Saab & Toyota go to the same website and just buy ideas that supposedly trick people into buying their products, instead of believing that when Toyota says ‘This is an amazing car, check out the features’ that message has come from Toyota.
Now. Are they ever going to believe anything Toyota say again? The public should believe the brand is talking to them, not the advertising, otherwise we fail to win their trust. It will actually increase consumer resistance to ads, the very thing we’ve worked so hard as an industry to break down.
Copyright issues.
Who owns the idea? The creative? The planner? The agency? The CD who knocked it back? Or the client who paid for the time that idea took to be developed, but for whatever reason rejected it? It’s double dipping and if I was a client, I’d be pissed off.
Plus, how many juniors are going to get absolutely shafted as soon as they show their books to anyone?
We lose revenue and quality.
No 5th level degrees in rocket science required here. Clients aren’t getting tailor made campaigns specifically crafted and slow cooked with their tastes and stomachs in mind, instead they’re getting the frozen dinner pack, reheated and dropped in front of them. Oh sure, it’s a great way to get those great ideas out there. But whoever buys it, isn’t really getting their message as it wasn’t tailored for them in the first place!
Imagine if products did it.
Imagine if Coke was selling Homebrand Cola with a Coke label. Toyota was rebadging Great Wall of China cars, but never told anyone for 3 years. Then, it gets busted wide open and everyone finds out. You find out your Toyota, is actually a Great Wall of China hunk of crap that has been marked up several thousand dollars. Would you be shitty? Yes! Will our clients be shitty? I’d hope so!
It turns agencies into agents.
Our only skill, as an agency, will be how well we can lunch, wine, dine & sell to clients. Because if every agency has access to everyone’s ideas, where is anyone’s point of difference? It will come down to agencies competing on price, disintegration of profit, loss of staff and possibly, if this takes off and any of us support it, fuck the industry right up the arse entirely.
I can’t see any reason why as an industry, we should support this, in fact I think we should boycott this, because in big picture terms it harms us far more than it will ever, ever help us.
SH
In a world where respect for creatives is at an all time low, this venture attempts to wrest what little recognition they have left. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest its armpits.