Crowdsourcing

Faces in the Crowd: Brett Snider

The recent trend toward crowdsourced advertising reached new heights during this year's Super Bowl.  Five finalists were selected in Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest, with some of those ads actually debuting during the game. As it turns out, one of the winning production teams wasn't new to crowdsourcing. Bill Federighi and Brett Snider had also created a winning ad for the Converse Gallery campaign, which makes Federighi and Snider what you might call Serial Crowdsourcees, something of an anomaly in the nascent field of crowdsource studies.

Daren Brabham, a new contributor to this blog, contacted Federighi and Snider for an installment to our Faces in the Crowd interview series. Brett Snider replied on behalf of the both of them, and his responses speak (in some very colorful phrasing, no less) to some of the previous discussions that have happened on this blog regarding crowdsourcing. From here, I turn the blog over to Daren and Brett:

Daren: Tell us a bit about your background?

Brett: I am from Des Moines, Iowa. After I graduated high school I went to a year of community college in Iowa and moved to L.A. when I was 19 to attend film school. I went to a school called Columbia College Hollywood (CCH) in Tarzana that nobody has ever heard of. That’s where I met Bill. I’m 25 years old and my skills are likened to that of an elk.  Bill grew up in Chicago and is 25 years old.  After he switched from Indiana University to Loyola University, he finally moved to Los Angeles and ended up at CCH, where we met.  All CCH really provided us was an opportunity to use equipment.

What crowdsourced work have you done in the past?  Tell us about the contests you’ve entered and what kind of work you submitted to them.

Our first user-generated spot was for a Converse contest. We were one of the winners and our spot played on television for a month or so. About a year later we heard about the Doritos contest and it seemed like it would get a lot of attention so we had to enter. We came up with two concepts and submitted them under separate names to help our chances of winning.

Do you consider yourself an amateur or a professional or somewhere in between?

So far we are amateurs but we’re trying to change that.  I appreciate the people that call us professionals, even if it’s not with the best intentions.  We’re doing whatever it takes to get some recognition.  We produce the spots ourselves and with our own money which makes us amateurs.  Suggesting that someone with formal training is a professional is mind-numbingly ignorant. To see an example of this go to any film school’s end-of-the-semester film festival.

Rest of the Q&A continued after the jump ...

Faces in the Crowd: Interview Series Part I

I've always said that crowdsourcing.com would be a group blog. Now I finally get to prove it. Shazz Mack (her nom de plume) has been corresponding with me since the launch of crowdsourcing.com. I recently persuaded her to contribute to the site. We agreed that it might be illuminating to conduct some Q&A's with people involved in various aspects of crowdsourcing. Shazz decided to interview Lise Gagné, a highly successful iStockPhoto.com photographer. I recommend the interview to all my readers, not just those following the effects of crowdsourcing models in the stock photography. Gagné's experience is revealing, not least because it shows the rapidly increasing economic potential in high-volume crowdsourcing models like iStockPhoto.com. Gagné also feels the microstock model offers advantages over the traditional stock agency route; fascinating given the disparity in pricing structure. At any rate, you'll all draw your own conclusions, and both Shazz and I hope to hear them in the comments section. Without further ado, I turn the blog over to Shazz ...

La vedette du stock
Meet Lise Gagné, the world’s first crowdsourcing photography star. With over 390,000 downloaded sales of her stock photographs in just 3 years, Québec photographer Lise Gagné has emerged as a global “stock star” in the world of crowdsourcing. What has made her so successful? According to Lise, it’s a mélange of passion, creativity, discipline and a very personal goal. (Interview and translation from original French by Shazz Mack)

A self-portrait, by Lise Gagné

What are the skills you apply to crowdsourcing?
I’m a digital stock photographer. And, as a former Web/multimedia designer, I also bring strong graphic design sensibilities and software skills to my work.

Which crowdsourcing organizations do you work with?
I’m an exclusive iStockphoto photographer and have worked with them since 2003.

Tell us a bit about your background.
I came to the world of stock photography after trying out a few different paths. I left school very early, at 14, and worked in boutiques and did some traveling. In my 20’s, I studied and worked in translation, [Lise is a francophone] but found it just wasn’t for me. So in 2000, at the age of 36, I went back to school again, this time for Web/multimedia at a local technical college (called a CEGEP in Quebec). I did really well and started at Web design shop. The digital photography “bug” bit me soon after that.

Describe what your workspace (static or mobile) looks like.
For a while I worked out of my apartment, and then I had a rented studio space for about a year. Today, I live in a downtown condo in Québec City with my partner, Louis Leblanc, and we work in a sun-filled loft studio that’s actually part of an old ice factory; there were many of these factories throughout Québec before the days of refrigeration. We just purchased the studio this year and are still getting settled. It’s a fantastic work space.

What other work to you do, if any?
I’m 100% focused on stock photography. I love it so much that I haven’t even felt the need to take a vacation for quite a while. All my trips are for stock-related events and visits. For example, I just went to the iStock event in Slovenia, which was great, and I’ve also gone to Las Vegas, Boston and New York for photo events.