[Alex Priest]

Hey Todd,

You make a great point–coming up with ideas is not at all easy. That said, if you define spec work that broadly, almost the entire advertising industry is based on spec (RFPs, by that definition, are requests for spec work!).

The nice part about our model is that it lets creators spend as much time as they want coming up with ideas, and none they don’t–whether that’s 30 seconds or two days or none at all. The pitch we ask creators to submit is very basic, and doesn’t even have to be fully thought out. We only ask for more developed ideas at the storyboard stage (where creators are then paid for those storyboards and their work). And of course, if a creator’s idea isn’t chosen, they retain full rights to that idea and no one else ever sees it except for the client and the GeniusRocket team.

On top of all of that, our creative team in-house is here to take those ideas–even if they may not be brilliant–and then make them brilliant. All we need is to know that the team behind that idea has a little bit of inspiration and a ton of talent, and we’ll make it rock.

Thanks again for your thoughts–we’re always seeking feedback from creative pros. Our experience so far has shown that studios tend to really like our model, and keep coming back to work on more projects. That said, we want to do everything we can to make it even better, so any and all feedback is appreciated!

All the best,
Alex

[Alex Priest]

Hi Max!

I ran across your post today and thought I might be able to offer some insight.

I’m the Director of Marketing over here at GeniusRocket (https://geniusrocket.com), and we, like Poptent, leverage certain elements of the crowd to produce creative advertising content. However, the similarities pretty much stop there.

Poptent is great for students and amateurs looking to get good practice producing work for big brands. It’s a great resource for brands looking to generate a lot of creative content, very quickly, but without as much concern for quality.

We look at things a little differently. Whereas Poptent is a crowdsourcing contest site, GeniusRocket is a creative agency powered by a curated crowd. We take the best of the crowdsourcing world together with the best of the agency world, and use a highly selective, fully vetted community of production studios to produce great work for big brands.

Most importantly for creative professionals like you guys, we are a no-spec agency, so anything produced for a GeniusRocket project is compensated for. We don’t ask anyone to work for free. We use a unique staged process to select a production studio for each project we run, and that studio is then given a production budget to run with and bring their ideas to life.

Looking at your work with Hand Crank Films, you’ve got some fantastic content. Your type of production studio is one that might be a good fit in our community–where you get paid for the work you create, and you don’t have to spend time and resources producing videos on spec.

Anyway, just my two cents! If you’re interested in hearing more about GeniusRocket let me know, I’m happy to explain more. And if you’re interested in applying to join the community, you can do so right here: https://geniusrocket.com/join.

All the best,

Alex
Director of Marketing, GeniusRocket
alex@geniusrocket.com