WNOA: The World’s First Open Source Advertising Agency

What’s better than a free lunch? Well, sometimes, the lunch that you pay for is better. Here is why:

Lionell Robbins’ definition of economics from 1935: “Economics is a science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses” doesn’t accurately describe the field of economics as noted in the late nineties by the “new economy”-supporters as well as the more modern Long Tailers. It’s the scarcity paradigm that doesn’t hold true in the digital age, where the marginal cost for information approaches zero. You know this already. The same holds true for ideas, or does it?

Not really. It’s true that the cost of distributing ideas approaches zero, but the value of that idea can both increase and decrease depending on the distribution. In the advertising sense, spreading an idea makes it more valuable (like We Try Harder or Just Do It), but spreading the ownership of the idea makes value decrease (like Jeep or Rollerblades unless you stay associated to being “The Original and Best”). You’ll see the same thing when you look at super high value web services like Facebook, You Tube or Flickr. They don’t give away the shares in the companies do they?

I intend to apply this structure to my own business of Walter Naeslund and here is how:

Here at Walter Naeslund we come up with a lot of ideas for different brands, but a lot of times there are reasons why we don’t have any luck approaching that brand with our idea. The brand owner may have a retainer deal with another agency eating up their budget, or they can be unable or unwilling to pay for our services for some other reason.

So we don’t approach them with our idea, and the idea goes to waste. But for spontaneous ideas, the marginal cost of putting the idea out there is zero. Therefore the idea or strategy or innovation or concept will be published here on walternaeslund.blogspot.com. Anyone who is able or willing to pay for a particular concept will see it promptly removed from this blog, though the idea may have been exposed to competitors or media already. For some that may be fine. Otherwise you can make a retainer deal or a running bill deal with us beforehand, and then no idea within that deal will be published. What you pay for then is your very own focused ownership of the idea (higher value) and we will then work on making it spread (higher value again) with your ownership retained.

Ideas put on the blog can of course be taken without payment, but the idea will have a publishing date and a moral ownership that is ours. Using it will put you behind moral bars and we will have a “ideas stolen”-ticker on the blog with special events where we celebrate you. (At least we’ll get a fun party out of our work, right?)

Fun huh?
The worlds first Open Source advertising agency. It’s an experiment. We call it WNOA: Walter Naeslund Open Agency.

Tagged as: Advertising, Brand, Business, Communication Trends, digital, economics, Facebook, Idea, innovation, moral, Philosophy, Psychology & Strategy, service