John Winsor is badass

First and foremost, if you don't know who John Winsor is, here he is. If you've ever read my posts previously, I've got a deep interest/fascination with the crowdsourcing concept and John is one of my favorite forward thinkers in the space. He also works (err, worked) at CP+B, which is an agency I admire simply because they take risks and they push their clients to take risks.

I was at a local conference here in New Orleans this morning listening to a speaker and checking my iPhone's Twittelator app when I saw the following tweet posted by @AgencySpy.

"Crispin alums start their own shop, also in Boulder. It's crowd-sourcing
centric http://bit.ly/18qh7y"

My first thought was, well this can't be John Winsor because he just wrote a book with Alex Bogusky called Baked In, Creating Products and Businesses that Market Themselves. But low & behold it is John Winsor and I'm so psyched to see him pushing the envelope and taking a risk to see if a business grounded in the crowdsourcing idea can be successful long term. In one of my previous posts, I pondered whether there could be a day when a large majority of people are no longer employed by one employer, and instead are open for business to whomever is in need of our services, experiences, and expertise. John's new company, Victors & Spoils, appears to be provoking that concept even more.

So check this out, John's new agency is crowdsourcing their logo design on crowdSPRING - seriously badass - they're putting their money where their mouth is. If Victors & Spoils does this right, and I think they will, they'll be able to really drive down their operational costs AND their overhead, by crowdsourcing assignments. And then, just when you think they're starting to crack one of the nuts attributed to the high cost of advertising (media placements is one I'd love to see them tackle!), they leverage that same crowdsourcing model to determine whether the concept or design is any good. So, rather than having a bunch of muckity muck brainiacs who think they know what customers will want/like, they will use their crowdsourcing business model to drive closer to the right concept leveraging the collective voice of the customer. It's incredibly powerful stuff, especially when you're trying to convince that really intelligent client of yours that the direction they want is wrong.

This is why I follow John Winsor. He truly believes in the power of "we" to make a better decision than the power of "me". I'm really looking forward to watching how this unfolds.