Design consultancy, sex and chocolate – strange bedfellows?
Not at all it would seem.
A recent post on a business networking site was offering chocolates in exchange for unwanted design ideas. The writer suggested that a design consultancy may have been fired from a project recently, or had a falling out with their client and might appreciate this modest recompense and the chance to hit back at the client in some small way.
In exchange for a box of chocolates he would require all intellectual property rights for the submitted material. Obviously it would only be a box of chocolates for the winning entry – he wasn’t made of chocolate after all. As an added incentive he suggested that there may be two boxes of chocolates if he got a particularly swift response.
He did. And not all of it was negative. I was amazed to see the number of people who were prepared to entertain the idea and asking, in serious tones, for more information about the brief, the customer demographics and so on.
They may have been swayed by promises of ‘credit were it’s due’ – the winner would have their association with the work broadcast to a large network of potential clients. All ready to beat a path to their doors armed with boxes of chocolate no doubt.
Setting aside any issues with the economic model proposed, the problem with leftovers is – if they are not fit for the purpose they were designed for – what chance is there that they will be fit for some randomly associated business or service.
It would be like throwing so much muck at the wall in the hope that some of it sticks. One of the respondents did in fact offer to send in the scraps from his latest project for The Sewer Cleaners Association.
This wasn’t the only example of someone looking for a quick and dirty solution to their branding problems and opting for a crowd-sourcing approach.
A competition post to a design site last week asked for a ‘sexy logo for an investment management company’. The parting shot on the brief was ‘Show us sex’. The successful designer would receive $350. Exchange rates being what they are at the moment I doubt I’ll be entering.
Once again I was struck by the sheer number of credulous scribblers who were prepared to respond and thought the lottery prize was worth it. The whole thing began to unravel when it became clear that what was ‘sexy’ to the client was not necessarily sexy to the rest of the world – and vice versa. When pushed for clarification the competition holder offered up an example of what they considered to be ‘pure sex’ when it came to corporate logos: Art Lebedev. Go on, take a look, you know you want to.
Unfortunately any attempt at inviting the Wisdom of Crowds is just as likely to result in the random efforts of a barrel-load of monkeys – given enough time and the complete works of Shakespeare notwithstanding.
The competition was eventually suspended due to lack of feedback from the contest holder. No winner was announced and not even a chocolate was exchanged. Perhaps I should put the chocolatier in touch with the scribblers.
Anyway enough of this. I’ve got a crate of Green & Black’s finest to get stuck into.
