John Winsor

What Happens Now?

As an entrepreneur that’s sold a few companies, I’ve had the experience of what it’s like pre and post transaction three times now. It’s something that entrepreneurs talk about and certainly worry even more about. It’s your baby. You’ve put your blood, sweet and tears into something. You have a team of fellow rebels that have taken a leap of faith, usually starting with lots of passion and a lot to learn and experience.

The conventional rumor is that gaining a new strategic partner can be a bit like Jekyll and Hyde – During the courting phase it’s all wonderful but when the deal’s done things change radically.

A month into our partnership with Havas, I’m more inspired than I ever thought I could be. Everyone I’ve met and worked with have been truly amazing. Not just positive but realistic, transparent, passionate, and accepting. From the beginning of V&S our vision has been to change the way advertising works for the benefit of clients and agency folks alike using collaborative technology. Working with the leadership of David Jones and the Havas team, I’m more confident that our vision will be radically accelerated on a global scale.

Finding a partner like Havas is what every entrepreneur dreams of.

Progression

One of the things I love in the sports of surfing and climbing is the idea of progression. An athlete does something new, approaches an unclimbed rock in a new way or surfs a wave that seemed impossible, and all of a sudden everyone can see the possibility. The culture as a whole can imagine climbing the new climb or surfing the wave. All of a sudden dozens of people can do what was unthinkable only a few months before. New stars are made in an instant and old icons are put out to pasture.

This weekend I was fascinated by Adam Sternbergh’s article, Around the World in One Day, in The New York Times Magazine about Ridley and Tony Scott’s crowdsourced documentary, Life in a Day:

The film aims to tell the story of a planet, but it’s the vulnerability of these individual moments, contributed as part of a larger project, that lingers. If the knock against the Internet in general, and YouTube in particular, is that it stokes our collective narcissism, this film, in its best moments, proves the opposite: not a global craving for exposure but a surprising universal willingness to allow ourselves to be exposed.

The worlds of collaboration, co-creation and crowdsourcing are progressing fast. They’ve gone from a wild west of too many confusing voices and lot’s of amateur, low-production, solutions to highly curated creations, like Life in a Day, that can rival the best of traditional productions.

The progression is happening at various speeds in different corners of the creative world. Music and photography have been leading the charge in this change for a while now while film and advertising are just starting their radical transformation.

In advertising, it feels like the progression has hit a tipping point. Hold on. The speed of change will only accelerate.

How Do the 3C’s, Collaboration, Co-Creation and Crowdsourcing Fit Together?

Being in Cannes last week I had the honor of hanging out with Jon Wilkins, co-founder of Naked Communications. He hit the nail on the head when he wrote this in Fast Company about his session at Cannes:

The one thing we learned researching our session during Cannes on community crowdsourcing and co-creation is that the best 'creative ideas' in the world have their own energy, their own means of distribution, and their own collaborators that propel them into a strata that conventional paid communications can never reach.

 From Cannes, I flew right to Phoenix to give a talk at the PDMA Co-Creation Conference and was super inspired to see Co-creation emerge as it’s own field with so much momentum.

Both at Cannes and at the Co-Creation conference I was asked how the 3C’s of Collaboration, Co-Creation and Crowdsourcing fit together. It's We think of it as a ladder of collaboration. The first step on the ladder is Social Media Engagement but it goes much higher eventually creating a whole company around a collaborative system. Think of Threadless or Local Motors.

Collaboration is not only the future of advertising but of business and perhaps society as a whole. 

Where are you on the ladder?

 

 

Is This the End of Advertising?

Deb Roy was one of my favorite speakers at this year's TED. What started as an exploration into how his son begins to speak and develop language. Deb has begun to point his tools towards public media creating both a content graph and a social graph. This segment starts at 11:00. So my question is when we can objectively connect every piece of content with every social conversation and track real media consumption, engagement and behavior, how will advertising compete with everything all the other content?

My sense is that advertising that can quantifiably effect cultural change will be worth a lot more and all other advertising will be worth a whole lot less.

Connecting Communities Beyond Advertising

Guest Post by Mat Ranauro

(Note: I asked Mat, our Director of Technology here at V&S, post this. He's started a new blog, Boom Days. So, be sure to go check it out. He'll be talking a lot about what's happening on the tech/community front. Lot's of cool stuff has been happening and we've been learning a ton every day. Mat's got a lot to share.)

I used to be in a band, this is not to imply I was or am remotely cool, I can assure you that's not the case. But being in a band allowed me to travel around the country with my friends, play new cities every night, meet new people and generally not have much to worry about. We encountered a lot of folks and observed just as many, we knew our “in a band” lives did not reflect the lives of most; People had responsibilities – a job – to sustain themselves and their families, 3 of 4 in the band did not.

A conversation stood out while we were in San Diego. We were staying close to the beach at a friend of the promoters house and a small party spun-up. Of course, we drank a few (million) beers and shot the shit. Someone brought up the topic “are you following your passion?”

Surprisingly, no one at the table said they were passionate about playing music, although every one of the people sitting at the table were in a band. How could that be? 

The group then went around the table, the chat getting more heated, while frustration began to brew when the consensus was obvious: people realized they had no passion for what they were doing everyday. The question landed at me. It was an easy thing for me to answer, I loved my job. It was truly satisfying and I have always been aware of my fortune to have found something I had passion for which also paid my bills.

The entire group turned on me. 

That conversation happened over 5 years ago but the backlash I received has stuck. Those eleven people were confused and pissed by my reply. Like they couldn’t believe what I was saying could possibly be true. But why not? When it happened I didn’t give the response much thought, I brushed it off and diffused the mob forming around me.

Their anger stemmed from hating their jobs and not finding any satisfaction whatsoever in the work they were doing. They couldn’t stand it. And something became apparent to me – this collective group is extremely intelligent and passionate for everything they’re NOT doing. 

Passionate people are everywhere, however the likelihood of those people using those passions to fuel what pays their bills is extremely unlikely. Being driven by something you believe in creates a completely different output: a genuine perspective.

The platform and community which is growing at Victors & Spoils, for me, is a direct response to those eleven intelligent and passionate people. It then multiplies by the thousands of people who now have a place to tap into their passions and contribute their thinking. 

We’re learning as we go. We’re in stealth mode, showing what path we’re on but carrying out a mission that will begin to reveal itself gradually. I wanted to shed a bit of light on the “why” behind the “what” we’ve got brewing: connecting more people to what they care about while giving them a place to contribute, learn and grow.

A distinction in the types of groups within our community is a critical point to be made. We believe the voice of an evangelic audience must inform the goals and vision of a brand while the craftsmanship and expertise of creative contributors defines the produced output. 

Our engine is taking shape: an open forum for anyone to contribute, a place to learn and grow as a creative problem solver and a proven group of top experts to craft the collective intelligence of the entire community into something that is less advertising and more informed, genuine communication between a brand and it’s audience.

It's Not About What You Say You Do, It's About What You Do

These days, everybody's talking about innovation. But, what are people really doing about it? It kind of reminds of surfing.

Lot's of folks talk about surfing and being a surfers. But, there's a big difference between sitting on the beach, waxing elequently about wave shapes, board shapes and gnarly rides and getting out in the water. It doesn't matter how good you are. The act of getting in the water is what makes you a surfer. It's all about doing, trying and failing. A lot.

I wrote a bit about my experience of learning surf in Flipped:

A few years ago, I sold my company I had owned for ten years and took an extended sabbatical. I went to Mexico to learn how to surf. Surfing has taught me that there is no substitution to repetitive practice. Many of the lessons I’ve learned from the sport of surfing are at the core of this book. Surfing is one of the iconic alternative sports representing not only the youth culture but also the beach culture. Many companies have used surfing to leverage their brands into household names in every town across the country. Everybody loves the image of surfing. Yet, I’ve discovered there are very few people who actually surf. Why is that? There is one simple answer: surfing is hard. I have a personal theory about surfing. It takes riding a thousand waves to become a surfer. It doesn’t matter if you catch 20 waves a day for 50 days or one wave a day for a thousand days; you just can’t get around the experience of learning the hard way.

If you want to be an innovator how will you ride a thousand waves? Start innovating. Start doing and making.

What We’re Learning at V&S #6: What’s the Motivation to Join the Creative Department?

The V&S  creative department has been exploding lately with over 3200 members as of today. One of the things we’re interested in is what’s motivating all of the good folks to join. Here are the top four reasons from a recent survey:

1. The V&S CCO and CD reputations were mentioned as the top motivation by many of the interview subjects – creative professionals are excited by the opportunity to work with these guys.

2. The opportunity for interesting projects and to do ‘good work’ with great brands.

3. V&S’s point-of-view on the industry and being a part of the future of advertising.

4. Additional income (ranked lowest in priority by a majority of subjects)

This highlights that people are looking for new ways to use their creativity. They want to work with great people on great projects.

Here’s what some of the folks had to say:

•“The model works great for me.  I love the idea of having briefs show up, working hard on them, sending them back and being evaluated.”

•“Following the talent where the talent is, working smart, I believe in what you guys are doing.”

•“Well, it’s really not about the compensation for us right now at this point in our careers … it truly is all about the work.”

•“I’m a firm believer that in the modern world, anyone who only has one job is either lazy or boring.”

Toyota Jumps Into Crowdsourcing with Ideas for Good

It's really cool to see Toyota jump into the Age of Abundance with both feet. Things are changing fast.

Is Your Brand a Curator?

It's a beautiful day in NYC today. I had a chance to drift around. I cruised into the Patagonia store. Patagonia is one of my favorite brands because it's more than a brand. It's become a cultural curator. When you buy a product from Patagonia you're buying more than a product you're buying into a culture based on sustainability and environmental values. And, Patagonia makes it easy for you to join the culture with the right products, information and values.

Is your brand a curator?

How Will You Apply Crowd Accelerated Innovation?

Chris Anderson really captures the essence of what the future of Crowd Accelerated Innovation and what it can do, not just comercially, but also philosophically. When the crowd has a voice, magical things can happen.

How will you apply crowd accelerated innovation?