Ketchum Expands Its Global Creative Firepower

NEW YORK, Sept. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Thomas Edison would have loved the crowdsourcing trend, having said, "To have a great idea, have a lot of them." To add to the flow of great ideas Ketchum generates and implements for its clients, the award-winning agency today launched Mindfire, its first crowdsourcing site.  

Graduate and undergraduate students with communication and digital skills from leading universities in the United States, the United Kingdom and Asia have signed on to participate in an open innovation community, where real challenges facing Ketchum and its clients are posted for students to tackle, alone or collaboratively. In exchange for their contributions, students will receive career coaching, personalized training and job alerts from Ketchum, and prizes provided by clients.  A Mindfire community member could even be asked to implement a "winning idea," and in such instances, would be compensated to do so. As an added incentive, every idea posted on Mindfire will result in a donation from Ketchum to Room to Read to buy a local language book for needy children in the developing world. (Room to Read is Ketchum's philanthropic partner.)

"Mindfire is a community of creative students at top schools on three continents who will bring fresh perspectives to our client challenges. We're really excited to see how they respond to our first posted assignment for our client Wendy's, who asked us to crowdsource ideas for a new product launch," said Chief Innovation Officer Karen Strauss, a co-developer of Mindfire along with Chief Information Officer Andy Roach.  

The program will begin with a four month pilot phase. The beta group of participating students was selected by their professors or through creative competitions expressly for their curiosity, eagerness to participate in real-world creativity challenges, and for their knowledge of all types of social and traditional media. Participating schools to date include:

• The Media School, Bournemouth University, UK
• Boulder Digital Works, University of Colorado at Boulder
• Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
• New York University, New York City
• Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• The Chinese University of Hong Kong

"We're increasingly seeing a desire among our clients for a steady stream of new and creative ideas, along with a willingness to accept good ideas from any part of the marketing discipline," said Andy Roach, who oversaw Mindfire's development. "Mindfire is a great example of the fusion of IT and creative idea generation that is so critical to the client-facing aspects of our business."

Ketchum is widely recognized for its success in generating creative ideas from throughout the network that drive business results. Mindfire complements a host of other tools including Ide8, an internal brainstorming platform available to all employees 24/7. Ide8 has already yielded several ideas that have become core elements of client programs.

About Ketchum

A communications innovator, Ketchum ranks among the largest global communications consultancies and leads the industry in the U.K. and continental Europe as Ketchum Pleon. With five global practices – Brand Marketing, Corporate, Healthcare, Food & Nutrition, and Technology – and specialty capabilities that include Access Communications (high- and consumer-tech PR), Concentric Communications (experiential marketing, events and meetings), MMG (clinical trial recruitment), Ketchum Global Research Network, Ketchum Sports & Entertainment, and Ketchum Pleon Change (change management and workplace communications), Ketchum leverages its marketing and corporate communication expertise to build brands and reputations for clients. For more information on Ketchum, a unit of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC), visit www.ketchum.com.

SOURCE Ketchum