Crowdsourcing agency Victor & Spoils is busy doing spec work for Harley-Davidson on the heels of the company’s split with Carmichael Lynch, their agency for 31 years.
According to V&S’s John Winsor:
We love the Harley-Davidson brand (just like most everyone). And we’ve talked to a bunch of our creatives and strategists (I dare say some of the best in the world) in our 1,800-strong creative department, and H-D was also at the top of the list of the brands they most loved. So, instead of going through the typical steps of credential decks and pitches, we thought we’d try something different.
We’re getting to work.
Just yesterday, the Victors & Spoils team did some quick strategic research pulled from public sources and went ahead and wrote a very open brief. Today, we launched it on our simple work-creation platform called The Squirrel Fight. And right now, creatives and strategists from all over the world are working against your brief.
I bet you didn’t know that V&S had “a creative department” with 1800 people in it. I know I didn’t. Of course, it’s not a traditional creative department. It’s a community of creatives willing to pitch their ideas for free to agency types and their clients in hopes that they might get paid, someday.
But let’s not get lost in that. Let’s think bigger thoughts. Here’s one…is Harley’s marketing organization–used to working with one of the best ad agencies in the world–ready for something new and different? Here’s another thought…is pitching from one’s blog or Twitter stream the new three-martini lunch? In my experience, landing new business takes great ideas, but it also takes connections, phone calls, lunches, dinners and lots of cocktails.
