AgTalk | Crowdsourcing and co-creation is the way forward: Talenthouse's Mehra

Remember watching a young kid performing amazingly stunning acrobats on YouTube, or read someone’s Facebook wall who has the knack of creating fashionistas? Well today, quest for talent has been eased, thanks to the digital environment we all live in. Understandably, from the marketers and brands end, highly digital communication has made it easy to receive raw, creative and innovative ideas, thoughts and work.

Bringing the two forces of emerging talent with key artists along with brands together in the right direction is the endeavour at the Talenthouse India, the Indian chapter of international platform in South East Asia for ‘Creative Crowdsourcing’ a joint venture between Reliance Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. Talenthouse connects across genres including film, fashion, music, art, design and photography on collaborative projects and embraces artists at every level. They enable engaging content generation on a digital space for brands to connect with audience. Headquartered in California, USA; Talenthouse boast of over 3, 00,000 artists and a 40-member outreach across the globe.

An entertainment industry stalwart, Arun Mehra, CEO, Talenthouse India has over 18 years of expansive experience and is a veteran of the Indian digital business. In his last stint was with Zapak as the Chief Operating Officer, he worked closely with brands like AXE, Pepsi, P&G, Gillett, Sony Erickson etc. to name a few. He started his career with O&M and moved on to MTV where he played a vital role in building ‘brand MTV’ and leveraged its equity for consumer and trade initiatives. He has also worked with Bennett and Coleman Group at Indiatimes.com and then moved within the group to launch Zoom. His next stint was with Shringar where he re-launched Fame multiplex with an aim to create a new cinema experience. He was also a part of the team that worked on the IPO and saw the second avatar of the company.

Adgully(AG): How would you define your stint with Talenthouse India?
Arun Mehra (AM): In 2010 I took on the challenge to drive Talenthouse India, a completely new business and pioneered this first of its kind social media engagement platform, in a virgin territory of Creative Crowdsourcing. Today, three years since our inception we have built Talenthouse India into SEA’s leading Creative Crowdsourcing platform catering to film, fashion, music art, design and photography. Over the years, we have been associated with brands like Pepsi, Samsung, Vodafone, Airtel, Micromax, Volkswagen, AXE, Asian Paints, Nerolac, etc. We have worked on a long term growth strategy and elevated the company to its next level. We have launched some big ticket IPs like My Nation My Anthem – crowdsourced the first National Anthem, India Online Fashion Week (IOFW) which will define the future of fashion. Our constant endeavour has led Talenthouse to be recognized with the industry today in a short span of time.

AG: How has crowd sourcing as a business evolved and what are the key trends in the area you've noticed in recent time?
AM: Crowdsourcing gained momentum amongst marketers given the existing brand clutter on social media today and declining loyalty. Every marketer turning to social media for consumer involvement ends up doing cliché activities like posts, tweets, contest etc. Marketers want to have conversations with their audiences in a rich, engaging manner and take involvement to the next level. Crowdsourcing instantly moved from only an extension to social media campaigns to being a part of a brands core marketing strategy. We have noticed two major trends in Crowdsourcing; firstly Content Curation: The rise of digital consumption has resulted in an overload of content. The coming year will be about curation of the current and new content for better usage. Platforms such as Pinterest, Quora, etc. have emerged on the basis of this need. The second trend we have seen is Target Specific Content: The world moving to smaller screens have resulted in a need for content that is engaging and what the consumer seeks for.

AG: Share with us your business model and also the importance of crowdsourcing in today's time?
AM: Talenthouse receives a service charge for the projects we undertake. Our major focus this year is on IP creation for brands to come and associate on larger projects. We also have a studio division wherein brands with specific need for content can get in touch with our artists at a nominal cost. Crowdsourcing has enabled brands to talk to their TG in their own language and also generate content created purely by their TG.

AG: You being a crowdsourcing expert, how are you looking at expanding creative crowdsourcing as a business?
AM: Internationally crowdsourcing, open innovation and co-creation have been around as part of marketing and innovative strategies which are only getting bigger and bigger.

AG: Share with us how the JV between Reliance Big Entertainment and Talenthouse worked for you in India and abroad?
AM: Reliance as a company has always been way ahead of its times across industries. Reliance Entertainment brought Talenthouse to India. Talenthouse Inc. a US based company wanted to tap into the large creative potential in India, making it today one of the largest contributors globally. Recently Starwatch, the music and live entertainment group within Germany’s pre-eminent media and entertainment company ProSiebenSat.1, made an investment in Talenthouse global. Others participating in the deal include Dave Stewart’s First Artist Bank, Gerard Butler and Jean Pigozzi – an outstanding group of creative artists. Such investments help us take our campaigns to a global audience and leverage from artist across the globe.

AG: What are the key things that go in the making of a successful crowdsourcing project?
AM: Key points for a successful Crowdsourcing campaign include Creative pool: Talenthouse over a period of three years has built a talent base of over three lakh artist across film, fashion, music, art and photography; secondly it is Quality Content: It’s all about the content today and brands have realised this. E.g. Ambi Pur, Clean & Clear, Axe, Bacardi etc. have all Crowdsourced films and used them on their digital channel. The next thing to keep in mind is Cost Effectiveness: A platform like Talenthouse provides brands with an opportunity to engage and connect with their audiences at a fraction of a cost as compared to conventional campaigns; e.g. Zodiac Clothing has used Talenthouse platform three times and aims to use it for more projects. The brand crowdsourced a model to be the face for their brand ZOD! Looking at the effectiveness of the campaign, the brand launched an activity to crowdsource a 360 degree campaign idea for Z3 and scriptwriters for ZOD! This will be followed by Targeted Outreach – The biggest success of a project depends on the amount of significant content it generates. Talenthouse has strategic tie-up with creative schools across the country. Every project is treated like an individual marketing campaign and our outreach team communicates and procures entries from schools relevant to the creative invite. For e.g. Lee crowdsourced designs made out of denim; the art required specific talent to be able to produce artefacts, apparels, and craft products out of denim. This activity was possible for Lee as Talenthouse had the right talent pool to support the same. The other important thing needed for successful campaigns is Technology - The uniqueness of crowdsourcing on Talenthouse is that it engages socially with audiences in their own language. The moment a person registers and uploads an entry on Talenthouse, there is a message that goes out to all his friends on Facebook that he has participated in a project for a particular brand/mentor on Talenthouse. For e.g. if you’re a writer, 40% of your friends on Facebook are writers too or belong to the same industry. The moment they notice that their friend is taking part in a project of interest to them, they too want to participate. After the submission period, voting begins; while the voting is on, the writer goes back to his friends and gets them to vote for him. Once someone votes, the project is posted on their Facebook page. This creates a viral effect. So every artist can bring in at least 5,000 engagements on Facebook - a big value for brands given that its audiences / consumers become its brand advocates. Like in the case of Samsung, where for their Guinness World Records attempt to create the largest digital art-piece they used Talenthouse for deriving art. The large scale consumer involvement activity was responsible for the success of the world record.

AG: How does the interest level vary is different in India and abroad both in terms of clients and talent?
AM: Brands like P&G launched connect and develop to create products through crowdsourcing in the early 2000. Also, people are more comfortable with the digital medium which is evident as the international team don’t have to cater to the artist over a phone unlike India. 

AG: What kind of challenges have you faced being in this space? Also, what according to you makes Talenthouse a sole company when it comes to crowdsourcing?
AM: Marketers have always been supportive of Talenthouse but the biggest challenge was to find ways in which they could consume the end content. Besides, India is still taking to digital; so getting artist to solely use the medium for opportunities required education.

AG: How effective are these new media platforms for you?
AM: Talenthouse is integrated with social media which helps in activating the campaign online and enable virality. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter helps us reach out to the artist community in creative ways and helps build awareness.

AG: Share with us the kind of projects you are working on. Also, what is the kind of future crowd sourcing holds?
AM: Currently we have some interesting creative invites on Talenthouse like India Online Fashion Week (IOFW) the first online fashion week crowdsourcing fashion designers, models, hair and make-up artists and photographers to come together for a fashion show in partnership with Jabong. We are also working on Master Card’s invite for a script, an idea or a film of a World Beyond Cash. Next in line is Blackberrys Sharp Fashion which has called graphic designers and copy writers to design fresh creative ideas for the upcoming Autumn Winter’14, this is followed by Kingfisher Big Chair which has called for 60 second film filling in the blank on ‘Divided By …., United By Kingfisher. We also have Flipkart Style Icon which presents an opportunity to win a modelling contract, Max Moments Called Life which invites filmmakers to create heartfelt of life for the Max Group comprising of Max Life, Max Healthcare, Max Bupa etc. And lastly, we have Nicorette which aims to create awareness of “how amazing happens” when people come together to get over their Nicotine addiction through films. We are in a very interesting phase of our business with IPs like IOFW lined up and all major brands from finance to e-commerce working with us, we have not been more confident in our unique business model.

With offices in Los Angeles, New York and London, Talenthouse has been associated with globally renowned artists like Metallica, U2, Paul McCartney, Lady Gaga, Pink, Rod Stewart, Kylie Minogue, Anita Dongre, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Rocky S and big brands like Pepsi, Samsung, Vodafone, Airtel, Micromax, Volkswagen, AXE, Asian Paints, Nerolac, etc.