Crowdsourcing: When the Sum Is Greater Than the Parts

Advertising icon Hal Riney once said, “The best insurance against mediocrity is hiring the best possible vendors.” Tabula Creative Principals live and work by that mantra. The company has developed an impressive cache of contractors who supplement their in-house marketing and design team on an as-needed basis when client projects require specialized or niche-specific assistance in the areas of software development, research, production and copywriting, among others. Here, Mark Gisi explains how and when Tabula utilizes this unique synergistic approach, and reveals why it serves his company — and its clients — so well.

—Lisa Picozzi

We're hearing a lot these days about the concept of crowdsourcing. Why do you think this has become such a popular business practice?

MG: I think it's a popular subject of discussion, but not necessarily a well-adopted business practice. Many clients "push" for all-in-one, full-service firms. But there's a price that comes along with that — for both parties — and the motivations for that setup are potentially biased. We want to be the best at what we do, and we realize we cannot do everything. So we pride ourselves in having the resources and the experience to put together the best team for each client and each project. Sometimes, those resources are in-house, and other times they are contracted. We can often make very compelling arguments for outsourcing certain tasks to specialists. In this day and age, the fact that we all don't work in the same room is nearly irrelevant.

What can you tell us about Tabula's unique approach and why it works for you?

MG: Not every project involves crowdsourcing, but many of the truly unique projects we are involved in are made possible by an openness to collaborate. Our core staff is hired for two key disciplines: marketing and graphic design. As it stands, we excel at collaborating in-house amongst these two disciplines, creating our best work through the power of tension. We could never expect to employ all of the subject-matter experts needed for the projects we're currently working on. However, we're very experienced at overseeing subcontractors in ways that our clients are not, and this creates checks and balances and cost controls in the process. Because the overhead of subcontractors doesn't have to be applied to our job-costing models, clients don't need to pay for expertise that they are not directly utilizing.

How does this model of doing business fit into your "tabula rasa" philosophy?

MG: "Tabula rasa" suggests that perception is based upon learned experiences. Our clients bring to the table their shared experiences in their subject matter, and we bring to the table a unique perspective of marketing that is the aggregate of our team's shared experiences.

We have a very dynamic business environment driven by our clients, and we are currently involved with a breathtaking diversity of projects. For example, we're creating websites for an international society of an esoteric breed of horses, one of the largest property developers on the East Coast, America's oldest natural history museum and a 75-year-old news publication for the Jewish community, just to name a few. Each of those sites has very different requirements, from start to finish. In the end, we have an overwhelming set of experiences to pull from, including many that may not even be clear from our public portfolio of work. To us, each client is an opportunity to gain and share experience with.

How large is your talent pool, and how do you determine what is the right team for each project?

MG: Our talent pool is technically unlimited, but our core team is the key to our solutions. Consistency is created by the fact that every single project that we work on is overseen by a principal. Not so with the competition; certainly not at the same price point.

For one job, we may seek to hire a copywriter with experience in the equine industry. Another may require a small development firm with a hands-on approach. Yet another may require a very large development firm with many more programmers that will allow us to work directly with our own Information Architect to create the requirements from which they will build.

Each project, just like each solution, is unique. There is a standard process, but not a standard formula for the solution.

What are the challenges associated with doing business this way?

MG: We turn the challenges of management into opportunities. We have the experience required to oversee subcontractors in ways that our clients cannot with a competitive edge. They key for us is identifying those needs before they land at our doorstep.

Can you tell us about some projects in which you've successfully implemented this approach?

MG: The examples that are the most exciting involve instances where we're able to identify clients that can also become a resource for us and our other clients. It's like adaptive reuse of marketing resources, which we call "market resourcing." In the case of the Academy of Natural Sciences, we employed another client's firm with a heritage-based consulting practice to help us design a market-research strategy to assist us in the rebranding process of the Academy. In the end, we gained a resource, and both clients received added value for their respective projects and experience at a fraction of the cost of the standard market approach.

What is your opinion about the staying power of crowdsourcing?

MG: Crowdsourcing makes us a more competitive, more flexible and more agile firm that is very connected to the exciting things that are happening outside of our normal, day-to-day activities in ways that our competitors can't be. Firms have been using this strategy for ages with production vendors, but with a more limited understanding of the opportunities. If it makes our work better and helps our clients achieve their goals, it's definitely here to stay.