In All Reality

“Social Media” is well past buzzword stage. It has passed through the crucible of the marketing hysteria, the absolutism of “If you’re not using it your are wrong” and come out the other side as a set of technologies and rules that can effectively be utilized to promote a brand. Yet, nearly every day we can see examples of how this “fantastic tool” can blow up in our faces. Stories abound of employees being fired from their jobs because of statements made on Twitter, law enforcement investigating underage teens for their drunken photos on Facebook, etc. And we have yet another to add to that ever-lengthening list.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CPB for short) is a ginormous design and advertising firm based out of multiple cities. Their impressive client list includes powerhouse names such as Microsoft, Burger King, Old Navy, Best Buy, Coke Zero, etc. These are not amateur people. However, even the pros can sometimes foul up… and the higher you are the harder you can fall.

CPB has been the subject of much debate in the design community as of late because of their questionable practice of turning to crowdsourcing for some of their client projects. There are many issues with this, not the least of which is the comparison of minimal costs that CPB spends on crowdsourcing versus the ludicrous sums they are paid for their “work”. Crowdsourcing (or “spec work”) has been under fire for some time in the design community, many professionals feeling that such practices take unfair advantage of designers with potential talent who in the end are paid little for their skills except in the debatable fee of prestige.

The dam broke when news hit that a Brammo Electric Motorcycles had contracted CPB to redesign their logo as part of a branding project with the titanic firm. CPB turned again to its crowdsourcing practices, placing the job as a specwork bid on CrowdSpring, pricing it at a $1000 fee for the logo chosen. $1000. One Thousand Dollars. CPB’s fee to Brammo was probably easily 7-10 times that amount, plus the ability to add yet another successful brand to their repertoire. The news quickly made it’s wade into the Twitterverse, whereupon a flurry of angry messages were tossed about. Many were simple statements, many contained a #cpb hashtag, and many were @replies to CPB’s Twitter account itself.

The latter action mentioned here – the @replies to the CPB account – are the most important because the CPB website homepage devotes a good portion to the feedback the CPB Twitter account receives. For example:

So, upon the wave of angry sentiments via Twitter, CPB’s feed on their homepage was covered in a deluge of comments such as:

• “Crispin Porter is ‘crowdsourcing’ an identity job on spec site”
• “Crispin Porter + Bogusky has no integrity for design [link to article]“
• “Crispin Porter + Bogusky has no respect for design or its clients”
• etc, etc, etc

Ouch. Social media is a great thing when it works to your advantage but it is a fickle, fickle beast. CPB probably got what they deserved in this instance, but it serves as a valuable lesson to anyone using such tools: be careful. Transparency is generally valued in a business, but sometimes having the ability to control how press about you is distributed on your own site has its advantages.

Note: the above screenshots are no longer current as CPB has launched a new version of their site. However, they still devote a prominent portion of their homepage to a Twitter feed of responses and updates.