WHAT IT MEANS

t sounds enticing: access to thousands of creative advertising and marketing personnel to help promote your brand or tell you if your planned campaign is going to work. But is SA ready to embrace such “crowdsourcing”?

Internationally, the idea is not new. Brand SA, the body that promotes SA overseas, is working with US-based crowdsourcing specialist Idea Bounty, inviting suggestions for encouraging Indian tourism to SA. The supplier of the best plan will win US$10 000.

Crowdsourcing entails throwing an advertising brief out into the market and seeing who comes up with the best idea. Those taking part may be independent or fulltime agency creatives.

Unilever is among many major groups shifting part of their business from traditional agencies to crowdsourcing companies.

Trevor Wolfe, Africa and Middle East MD for SA crowdsourcing company Springleap, believes there is great potential in Africa. The company started life running competitions for T-shirt designs but is now a fully fledged crowdsourcer. It operates out of Cape Town and Johannesburg and last year opened an office in New York.