Wieden Kennedy’s Nokia Competition Shows That Crowdsourcing Can Suck For The Crowd

The recent headphone competition that was run by Nokia by the London office of the advertising agency Wieden Kennedy highlights how much the odds seem stacked against creatives who participate in crowsdsourcing. After receiving entries from creatives with designs of headphones inspired by a favorite track, one of the top prizes was awarded to a designer that works both for Nokia and Wieden Kennedy – an action that specifically goes against the rules of the competition.

There is big discussion going on across the web where creative minds are wondering if crowdsourcing has gone too far. A recent Wired magazine article said:

Witness the upheaval afflicting the design industry, sparked by the rise of so-called “spec design” sites likecrowdSpring and 99designs. Customers post creative briefs directly to the community, which then competes to create a design that best fits the clients’ needs. A typical “assignment” will draw dozens of submissions. The winner receives a nominal fee (as little as $200), and the client receives a logo or website design at a fraction of what a professional agency might charge. The losers get zip, which goes a long way to explaining why working on spec (”on speculation,” or without guarantee of payment) has always been considered the work of last resort for writers, designers and other creative professionals.

Wieden Kennedy’s management of the competition for Nokia is another example of designers getting the raw end of the deal. Not only do Nokia get a whole lot of free content to use in their advertising – but they award one of their own for a top 5 prize. Designer Johnny Lighthands posts on his portfolio site that Nokia and Wieden Kennedy in London are his clients. The rules of the competition claim:

The employees and directors of the Sponsor and/or its licensees, advertising, promotion or production agencies and provider companies (and their respective IRS dependents, immediate family members (spouse, children, parents, siblings) and individuals residing in their same household) are not eligible to participate.

When we raised this point in the comments of our initial article highlighting the competition an Anna Puukko at Nokia responded with this statement:

Although the winner is not employed by W+K or Nokia, the fact that he’s worked on projects for W+K or Nokia puts his involvement into a grey area. We should have noticed this and apologize to all competition participants that we didn’t. However, nobody was paid to make designs, all were voluntary and competition winners were decided on via a public vote and panel of expert and impartial judges.

We’d guess that the folks at W+K and Nokia are scratching their heads and wondering why we’re making such a noise about this – but we have a few issues with what’s going on with their campaign. For a start, it’s a little underhand to say that they’re off the hook because Johnny Lighthands wasn’t an employee of Nokia or W+K. Well, firstly surely if he produces work for Nokia he should be considered a production agency and secondly, we’d argue that he is employed by both firms. How do you define an ‘employee’ these days? Surely an employee in its broadest sense is someone you employ to do something – not someone where you have a 1050s style contract between your company and that person?

Also, there seems to be an element of deception going on. Lighthand’s ‘how I made my headphones’ blog is also rather suspicious. For a designer, the blog seems deliberately low-fi – it’s as if it has been made to look like just another contestant’s site. To us though, it really looks like if was built as part of the campaign and that WK either commissioned it or built it themselves (and therefore proves that Johnny Lighthands actually ‘worked’ on the competition).

The third reason we make a point is echoed in Anna’s comment: “nobody was paid to make designs, all were voluntary.” Ad agencies and brands are disconnected with the reality of crowdsourcing. While staffers at brands and agencies have the luxury of having a salary that covers the time they create work that gets rejected, the people who make these designs often do this at the opportunity cost of working on other projects. In fact, many often enter these competitions so that they can get noticed by big advertising agencies with the hope that they can get hired. The sad reality is that ad agencies and brands at best don’t care about creators’ efforts and at worst exploit their work with no compensation of any kind.

There is a growing resentment within the creative community about the use of crowdsourcing – those who use it for their sole gain had better consider a sea-change in opinion.