The creative industry is at best, a breeding ground for innovative ideas, movers and shakers, and where the most brilliant ad campaigns that reign on forever in our minds, begin. That said, at worst, it can be volatile, extremely high demand, an ultra competitive place and surprisingly conservative.&nbsp;To get in with this industry, to be - an insider - you have to make your way through the ranks, get noticed, get established, and put out work, likely as part of a team, that's a winning proposition.I love this quote by H.E. Luccock:&nbsp;"No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it."&nbsp;What that translates to, is that the strength of each individual talent, is the strength of how strong each campaign will be.&nbsp;How though, do companies, and individuals, make their way and climb the ranks, without recycling the same ideas and people as their competitors?Recently, I had a phone call with a high-level Creative Director for a well respected global ad agency. While my purpose on the call was to suss out his thoughts around branding, messaging, and how best to showcase talent - what I didn't expect was to hear some shocking examples of why the industry needs to change the way it discovers talent.Imagine a scenario, where a competitor at another agency and you are both going out for the same client pitch. You have an internal team, and employ freelancers as part of the brief process, to help make yours the winning pitch. After all - you can't afford to go small - or you may as well go home.&nbsp;How did you find the freelancers you are using?&nbsp;Concerning elements may be .. Are they self-signed up and marketing themselves for a particular type of work? Is it someone you've used repeatedly, so you've done what's comfortable/easy? Do you have a guarantee that this person isn't working the same pitch, for a competitor, putting similar ideas forward for both sides?It might seem shocking, the thought that the same freelancer might be working on two pitches, competing against each other, but this is reality.And it happens, more often than you could ever imagine.In a world where freelancers go to sites and self-sign up to let the market know they are available, while it may run with convenience, it can be lacking to hire only from a pool of convenient talent. Think about the best talent out there - are they self-signing up on sites? Maybe, perhaps. But they're usually booked, busy, great at what they do, and per referrals and word of mouth, keep very busy.&nbsp;So then there's the word of mouth route - your black book. Human beings, by nature, don't love change. We like to stick with what's easy, what's comfortable. Adapting to change is a learned, and admirable, skillset, that in business tends to be harder, the bigger the risk in the project.&nbsp;&nbsp;If the freelancers in your little black book are repeatedly there for you though, how do you know who else they're also there for? How do you know that you're tapping into the freshest and best ideas?You don’t.Think of a small talent pond, and everyone is fishing in it, repeatedly, all of the time. At a certain point, it becomes…. well, exactly what it is - everyone fishing in the same small pond, catching the same talent over and over.&nbsp;Now imagine what might be a new more perfect scenario, where there's an entire ocean of talent out there, you’re going to be able to fish for.&nbsp;More talent will be available simply because you’re fishing in much more expansive, deeper waters, and because the talent has been curated, it’s better too.&nbsp;Now imagine that ocean was full of over 1 million highly skilled candidates, across multiple roles. All accessible for just one small monthly fee.No finders fee, no recruiter fees.&nbsp;No need to go through - anyone trying to earn a cut - to talk to the talent.What you imagined actually exists, it’s calledTalent Ferret.We see the circular motion in the talent pond - and we're here to help you break out of it.&nbsp;Take a chance - take a look at who else is out there - it might be the difference in winning your next pitch, or not.<a href="http://www.talentferret.com/">www.talentferret.com</a>Reach out to us at ocean@talentferret.com to have a chat and learn more.

Ad Agencies: are you afraid you might be using the same freelance talent on a major pitch as a rival? If not, you should be.

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<h2>The Need for Faster and Smarter</h2>&nbsp;Creative teams find themselves up against an evolving set of challenges which require a new mindset. The increasing pace of the creative industry has meant that teams need to work not just faster but smarter. Change is ever present.&nbsp;New platforms emerge and evolve and time frames are ever more fluid. As a result, creative teams need embrace the multi-layered nature of every project all while maintaining a commitment to quality.Because of this layered approach, discovering, validating and commissioning the right team for every job is essential.&nbsp;We live in a world which contains the technology to help deliver and process more and more data, but the tech is nothing without the right minds to process and evaluate it. All of the above is in essence what 180 Amsterdam's, Chief Production Officer, Marloes Van Den Berg had to say recently. She also, specifically, made this rather timely comment:<h4 style="text-align:center;">“When we put radical collaboration at the heart of what we do, we are ready to give up control or ‘ownership’ for the good of the idea, and that’s a new and, for some, scary place to be.”</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;"> &nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">Marloes Van Den Berg, Chief Production Officer, 180 Amsterdam,</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">Sept 2021</h4><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2>The Power of Vertical Search</h2>&nbsp;Economist George Akerlof in his 1970 paper “The Market for ‘Lemons’ ” showed that that markets could suffer greatly because of the existence of “lemons” - apparently decent products or services that had problems. Sellers know which ones are lemons but most buyers don’t.This insight was so counterintuitive and radical at the time that his paper - related specifically to used cars - was repeatedly rejected from the top journals in economics, but Akerlof was right about the critical importance of information asymmetries and ultimately he was recognized with a Nobel prize for this work.&nbsp;There is a gap in the B2B search market. The gap exists, in part, by the design of Google’s search algorithm, which ranks websites based primarily on the importance of links, but also because it's so broad and therefore more likely to be seen as generic than deeply focused.&nbsp;Using Google you’ll find some of the most popular creative source websites, but not the majority of creatives found on those platforms. More importantly, results might not provide the right type of source, such as Upwork or Fiverr (often times with paid for exposure), where the commitment is to price rather than quality.Curation Zone fills this gap by using vertical search to index the content of creative source platforms which helps support unique workflows, provides domain expertise and better removes the creative lemons.The amount of digital exhaust has increased drastically over the last few years. The emergence of Behance, Vimeo and others have decreased the barrier to entry for creatives on the web. Having a profile on a source platform is one thing, but getting found is another.&nbsp;Creatives must invest in website tools and resources and consistently optimize content beyond the source platforms, they appear on. Not to mention, the time it takes to accumulate SEO authority. Currently for most creatives, this looks like a tall order.Curation Zone's creative talent vertical search eliminates these barriers, enabling the discovery and evaluation of over 8 million creatives worldwide, whichever source platforms they appear on. It's sole purpose is to make the processing and comparison of millions of creative talent profiles possible, and once algorithmically curated, the most appropriate selections are searchable in just a click or two, by role and more.&nbsp;<h2>Arming the HiPPO</h2>&nbsp;There is a serious problem with our cognitive abilities when making decisions: we have no way of knowing when our fast, instinctive and emotional, System 1 brain, is working well, and when it isn’t.&nbsp;We have lousy insight about our own intuition.We don’t know whether the quick judgment or decision we reached is accurate or has been polluted by one or more of our many biases. The rational calculations of technology driven System 2 processes such as Curation Zone’s creative talent discovery algorithms, can however, be easily evaluated, but as leading psychologist Daniel Kahneman points out, System 1 really can’t - least of all by ourselves.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h4 style="text-align:center;">HIGHEST PAID PERSON’S OPINION</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">In 2006, Avinash Kaushik and Ronny Kohavi, two data analysis experts created the acronym HiPPO (highest-paid person’s opinion) to summarise the dominant decision-making style at most companies. Even when the decisions are not made by the highest-paid people, they’re often based on opinions, judgments, gut, and System 1 thinking. This approach frequently doesn’t work well, and HiPPOs too often destroy value without the assistance of technology driven System 2.&nbsp;</h4><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2>Machines Take the Calculations and Probabilities, Humans Take the Initiative</h2>&nbsp;After years of recruitment process indifferences, Google adopted a hiring methodology in which all interviewers used structured interviews and asked largely the same questions, and, as they explained, “We then score the interview with a consistent rubric. A concise hiring rubric . . . distills messy, vague, and complicated work situations down to measurable, comparable results.”You’ll see a clear line between the great and the average when setting the rules in a clear and concise way. We spent 9 months talking with over 80 creative commissioning agents, before deciding on the criteria for our hiring rubric algorithm. The outcome is a system built by collaboration, based on criteria that help make the process of hiring - freelance and permanent - creative talent efficient; such as being able to methodically compare like for like; not an easy task when creative source platforms are set up in such diametrically opposed ways.&nbsp;<h4 style="text-align:center;">SUPER FORECASTERS</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">In 1984, the political scientist Philip Tetlock and his colleagues started undertaking a decades-long project to assess the accuracy of predictions. In a test involving more than 82,000 forecasts, Tetlock found that “humanity barely bests a chimp” throwing darts at the possible outcomes.&nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;"> &nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">Tetlock also found that some people, whom he calls “super forecasters,” really are able to consistently generate forecasts more accurately than chance would predict. They tend to take in information from many sources and, perhaps more important, show an ability to adopt multiple viewpoints when looking at a situation.</h4>&nbsp;<h2>Biases Need not Dominate</h2>&nbsp;In case after case, when a technology model can be created and tested, it tends to perform as well as, or better than, human experts making similar decisions.&nbsp;Too often, we continue to rely on human judgment when machines can do better. Getting algorithms to make the initial decisions, in a CONSISTENT and EASILY comparable way, then allowing human minds to make the final decision has been proven to be a very effective partnership.&nbsp;<h4 style="text-align:center;">Curation Zone Redefines Creative Talent Discovery</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;"> &nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">You can access billions of bits of creative talent data, which have been normalised and structured by using a precise hiring rubric</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">&nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">Search talent profiles from over 16 creative source platforms, plus LinkedIn data in, one search - 8m profiles scored and indexed, globally&nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;"> &nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">Save any search results, and revisit at any time</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">&nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">With built in asset management, team collaboration, sharing and a key feedback loop; it's the only efficient way to start any search for creative talent</h4><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2>Combinatorial Innovation</h2>&nbsp;As the possibilities of new technologies increase, they compound upon each other to realise new previously impossible tools, which combine several new technologies. Combinatorial innovation is fast and when it’s leveraged by the power of the depth of creative source platforms, the results are transformative.Opening up the talent present on these popular creative source platforms provides enormous benefits. Most fundamentally, it brings a greater volume and variety of contributions, skills, and ideas than an internal team, ever could muster - or be expected to evaluate any other way - how else could you search 16 source platforms in one go?This platform of platforms becomes very influential because of the choices it makes about curating content; profiles, collaborations, engagement, awards won and so, while maintaining a fundamental rule of openness - being regularly updated, it's never closed to new creative talent.&nbsp;Enabling a broader and improved talent search, discovery and validation process.&nbsp;<h4 style="text-align:center;">INFLUENTIAL INFORMATION BROKERS</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">As the mathematician and author John Allen Paulos observed, “The Internet is the world’s largest library. It’s just that all the books are on the floor.”</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;"> &nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">And large collections of knowledge, such as creative source platforms, are valuable because people should be able to consult them easily, and so become more informed.&nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;"> &nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">The uncontrolled nature of this creative crowd brings with it a difficult problem,&nbsp;however. It can be hard to find what you’re looking for in an ocean of unstructured information, fed by countless free-flowing rivers of contribution that never meet.</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;"> &nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">Curation Zone solve this search conundrum by algorithmically curating all of the source platform creative talent profiles - presenting a much edited shorter list by role, sector, medium, territory and expertise to the commissioning agent in a ranked index, from over 8m creative profiles, across all platforms.</h4><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2>Organisational Dysfunctions are Real Things</h2>&nbsp;New knowledge is being created constantly in almost all disciplines, and that knowledge can be slow to enter the heart of organisations. If the creative innovators, researchers, and problem solvers working within the core have not worked hard to keep their skills up to date, the crowd will easily be able to out manoeuvre and out think them.The creative crowd is so valuable, in large part, because it’s massively marginal: it contains huge numbers of people who are some combination of smart, experienced, full of ideas and motivated, and can be quite far away - geographically, intellectually, and/or culturally - from any organisation’s core.Outsourcing, offshoring, freelancing, in-housing and other aspects of “unbundling the organisation” have increased substantially in recent years as digital technologies have improved and diffused. It’s pretty clear that a large movement is under way to take much of the work that used to be done within the single hierarchy of organisations and move it to the "open" market.But without ways of processing and understanding the data related to this vast creative crowd of talent, the task is one that will likely bring limited reward - word of mouth is no longer going to cut it as THE WAY to discover talent, in a world where data processing technologies enable a much broader and more effective approach.&nbsp;<h4 style="text-align:center;">ACQUIRING INNOVATION</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter maintained that smaller, younger, more entrepreneurial firms - companies that had no interest in maintaining the status quo - were more likely to come up with truly novel ways of doing things than large corporations.</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;"> &nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">MIT’s Eric von Hippel, highlighted the large role that “lead users” play in coming up with innovations in many domains. They are pioneers who deal with problems in a specific area for which there is no solution on the market.</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;"> &nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">“There is a better way,” to discover, innovate and solve creative problems by utilising the vast array of creative freelance talent available right now - but first you’ll need to understand what they can bring, in a structured way.</h4><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2>Information Asymmetrics</h2>&nbsp;Recommendations can be ineffectual without a great degree of trust. Curation Zone's three tiered creative talent curation process gives added value to search results:Source Platform Curation - how do they rank, who do they commend, reward, show highly in their search and do other members engage with?Algorithmic Curation - equalise unstructured platform data - across 16 source platforms - to enable like for like comparison. A mind-blowing 190,000 roles had to be mapped into 140 searchable roles.User Curation and feedback - who do users prefer, like, share, engage with, commission and what searches are most important?<h4 style="text-align:center;">DESIGNED FOR TRUST</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">How do you overcome severe information asymmetries? The economists Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok highlight online user reviews of platforms as examples of a broad reduction in information asymmetries. Airbnb CEO and cofounder Joe Gebbia refers to this system of peer reviews and ratings as “design for trust” and highlights another of its benefits: it can help us overcome our personal biases.&nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;"> &nbsp;</h4><h4 style="text-align:center;">Platforms succeed at capturing and creating value in part because they reduce information asymmetries that previously kept some beneficial transactions from happening.</h4><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2>Creative Collaboration</h2>&nbsp;With the help of Graph Networks that evaluate creative TALENT based on their connections, collaborations, content engagement and brand &amp; agency relationships, we are better placed to process complex interactions. The results of which are key drivers&nbsp;of our hiring rubric algorithms effectiveness.<figure class="image image-style-align-center image_resized" style="width:743.993px;"><img src="https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C5612AQGLb9OutYN3BQ/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/0/1631796539187?e=1637798400&amp;v=beta&amp;t=asJAk5idcsEgmcVDuSic1dXCT236_bX_FgcXL8s-sJQ" alt="No alt text provided for this image"></figure>&nbsp;<h2>Recalibrating the Culture of Creative Talent Discovery</h2>&nbsp;The need to not just understand, but to empathise and connect with people is more relevant than ever. We are focused on leveraging the very best of human intelligence with advanced technologies to help make those connections more effective.Machine Learning, AI, is a fast developing field. As a collective we have only begun to scratch the surface of what is possible. Thus the pace of change is faster than expected due to this compounding effect. This is the cusp of a phase change in our approach to our way of working. Adopting technologies as part of the process for previously human-centric creative talent discovery tasks, absolutely requires embracing previously unimaginable ways of delivering solutions.

Creative teams find themselves up against an evolving set of challenges which require a new mindset. The increasing pace of the creative industry has meant that teams need to work not just faster but smarter. Change is ever present. New platforms emerge and evolve and time frames are ever more fluid. As a result, creative teams need embrace the multi-layered nature of every project all while maintaining a commitment to quality.

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Toward a New Mind-Machine Partnership for Creative Talent Search, Discovery and Validation

Having spent over 20 years traveling the world putting together video and photo shoots, I have for some time been perplexed by the lack of cohesive data available to anyone looking to hire creative talent. It's no wonder that brands and agencies seem to play it so safe.The thing is, you can no longer rely on production houses and creative source platforms, such as Vimeo (only 15,000 or so of their 1m users are listed as "for hire"), to find you the best and up and coming talent, because the landscape has changed. There is now more need for flexibility - freelance is queen and so are certain "new" creative roles, such as, UX/UI, AR/VR, 3d Design, Artist, SFX and so on. It's where the growth and demand often is, combined with more traditional roles such as Creative Director, DoP, Graphic Designer and Editor.Even in the field of video production, the broader demand for digital, with much lower budgets than TV, warrant a different type of solution (the production house/director combo is not going to cut it here).What about gaming, a massive growth area and one that has been dominated by technologists for years. Riccitiello, CEO at Unity, recently outlined the industries path to growing within organisations:&nbsp;<h3 style="text-align:center;">Growing our penetration with artists is key to this effort. When I worked in gaming, the ratio of artists to technical personnel on game teams was about 1:1. Today, artists outnumber technologists at least 2:1, and it's quickly adding a 5:1 or more&nbsp;</h3>&nbsp;So, when looking for certain types of creative talent there are newer source platforms to consider; Behance, Dribbble, ArtStation to name but a few. Add in the more traditional go to sources, such as AdForum, LeBook and Ads of the World, you'll start to get a better picture of the creative landscape and how broad it is. More to the point, how difficult it can be to find the right talent across so many - way in excess of 50 - creative talent source platforms (not all of them much use).There is also so much depth on these platforms, Behance have 4.2m creatives, Eyeem 490,000 and The-Dots 460,000, for example. So, if you are looking for a photographer, you might consider these as good sources - but why stop there? What about being able to find the right photographer in one search, across 13 or more source platforms?&nbsp;<h3 style="text-align:center;">We highlight the best creative talent from each source so you can search through just those, not hundreds of thousands or even millions of pointless choices.</h3><figure class="image"><img src="https://curationzone-strapi-assets-dev.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/1_72c77d27f3.png"></figure>From our curated selection you can browse through a choice of 50,000 or so photographers, but that's without adding in other filters, such as Sector, Medium, Country and Experience, which would take the number down. You can then, if you wish, deselect some of the 13 source platforms, with results, to narrow your choice down further - after all, we all have our preferred sources -&nbsp;<h3 style="text-align:center;">although that often comes from habit rather than knowledge</h3>&nbsp;Our platform will vastly speed up the process of finding the very best talent, at the same time helping you broaden your scope. What makes this type of multi-searching even more useful is that you can save all of your search results, which means you don't have to do the same search over and over, as you would have ever time you revisited a source platform.All these and more source platforms combine to make for a broad spectrum of sites to search from when looking for your next superstar creative talent, be that freelance or longer term contract. Searching one by one is difficult, time consuming and more importantly impossible to compare profiles, as they vary so much across platforms. A graphic designer from Dribbble versus one from The Talent Manager, is not an easy comparison to make.Curation Zone make this process much easier; normalising the data across all source platforms to allow you to compare apples to apples.&nbsp;<h3 style="text-align:center;">We aren't replicating or dis-intermediating the existing platforms, rather we act as a "platform of platforms", using AI to create an up to date index of creative talent across many platforms - a little like the Google of creative talent discovery</h3>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://curationzone-strapi-assets-dev.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/2_8e6ad9b4ff.png"></figure>Up to 80% of the talent found on most source platforms, we'd not consider of decent quality. For example, over 25% of Behance creatives claim to perform a certain role, but we found no evidence of them doing so, at all.&nbsp;<h3 style="text-align:center;">Cutting out the creative talent that have weak profiles is a big part of what we do.</h3>&nbsp;But, at the same time, we are always looking for rising talent, so the algorithms are built to allow for this.<figure class="image"><img src="https://curationzone-strapi-assets-dev.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/3_f8229890e6.png"></figure>The current roster of 15 source platforms we evaluateWe spent 10 months learning how each source platform works, how their search works and how they recommend or commend the best of their talent. Once we discover how a site works we can easily recommend only the top and best rising talent from each source platform.For example, Dribbble have over 1,200,000 creatives on their platform, but around 30,000 of them are the most talented, according to Dribbble, so these are the ones we mostly focus on. The other 970,000 or so, we leave for another day - our evaluation is fluid, we revisit each site at least once per month.&nbsp;<h3 style="text-align:center;">Why get bogged down by talent appearing in search results that you don't need to see?</h3>&nbsp;All these platforms have their own curation system, which we analyse, we then present that data in a way that enables apples to apples comparison; this equates to our curation. Finally, you curate from the results each search suggests - your curation.We then process the data from each of your searches and feed that back into your results, a 4th curation, you could say. But of course that is one too many to fit nicely into the 1944 Harold Samuel property quote "location, location, location", so let's stick with the 3.&nbsp;<h3 style="text-align:center;">Curation, curation, curation, it's what makes the difference</h3><figure class="image"><img src="https://curationzone-strapi-assets-dev.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/4_f14fa12512.png"></figure>You can also save your search results, revisit, revise and share them as a Project, so none of your hard - searching and evaluation - work is lost. Shortlist, thumb up or down tools are also useful ways of saving and sharing your selections with your team.Over the next week or so we'll be adding: ArtStation, Ads of Brands, David Reviews and Free the Work as source platforms, with more to follow soon. If you spend more time than you'd like - who doesn't? - trying to find the right creative talent, request a demo <a href="https://www.curationzone.com/demo">here</a>.Thanks again to James Thomas and Dentsu for helping us get this far...not forgetting Barry Davidson too.

Having spent over 20 years traveling the world putting together video and photo shoots, I have for some time been perplexed by the lack of cohesive data available to anyone looking to hire creative talent. It's no wonder that brands and agencies seem to play it so safe.

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When finding the best creative talent, the three things that matter are: curation, curation, curation

From the producer, brand and agency perspective, Curation Zone, is providing a one-stop discovery shop to find the best possible talent from across many of the industry leading platforms; including Behance, Vimeo, Le Book, The Dots, IMVDB, Dribbble, Talent Manager, AdForum, Mandy and seven other creative talent source platforms - with more to be added soon.To achieve this, Curation Zone uses artificial intelligence algorithms to normalise the creative talent "credential" data such as role credits, projects (uncredited), awards, engagement and commendations from each platform. This makes it easier for producers, agencies and brands to compare apples to apples, and find the best talent for the job, no matter which platform the talent prefers to use.<h3>Frictionless Intelligent Index</h3>Curation Zone isn't replicating or disintermediating the existing platforms, rather it acts as a "platform of platforms", using AI to create an up to date index of creative talent across many platforms - a little like the Google of creative talent discovery.To help explain, I was interviewed by Scott Stonham of Well That's Interesting Tech about what we are trying to achieve at Curation Zone, how we are using cutting edge technologies and what benefit it will deliver to the creative industries.Scott Stonham in CONVERSATION WITH&nbsp; Russell Glenister, CEO Curation Zone&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Scott - When it comes to discovering fresh, quality talent, what challenges does the industry face now that it didn’t a couple of years ago?Russell&nbsp;- There is definitely a greater need to be flexible at today’s agencies. Historically, agencies relied more on big retainer jobs and therefore built up top heavy in-house creative teams, but now the work is often project based and broader in scope than TV and print, so the need for flexibly is far greater.One of the top 5 Ad Agencies recently told me they have over 200 freelance vacancies to fill out of their US offices aloneCOVID has really put a lot of pressure on the organisations with over-weight in-house teams, but finding qualified, reliable, flexible freelancers is hard work and not always effective - that’s the challenge we are solving.Scott&nbsp;- Why is it so hard to find the talent? There seem to be so many different platforms. We've already touched on the ones you work with above, but there's the likes of Upwork, Unsplash and so many others.Russell&nbsp;- The ones you mentioned tend to be more consumer, pro-sumer or small/medium business focused - although we have undertaken in-depth analysis of Unsplash and will likely add that platform later - mostly these sectors are not our core priority. The agency supporting Nike wants to make sure they get the best and most promising up and coming photographers, not the cheapest or the most active on a platform, but with no experience.These platforms are flooded with creative talent who have some verifiable work credentials but more often, those who don’t. Unfortunately the same problem is true with the more professionally focused platforms we work with. Pretty much anyone can register on most of them and say they’ve worked with the top brands, but there’s very little in terms of a systematic way of checking this - that is until we came along - it’s a big part of the challenges we face.Scott - Why is this important to creative workers?&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Russell&nbsp;&nbsp;- The creative world has moved on, it’s not all about producing TV and print ads anymore. The content produced is much more diverse, and usually has to be produced quickly. That often means the shift away from total reliance on in-house teams to more flexible on-demand, more diversely skilled creatives, is critical. This now means the big agencies and brands are looking for talents and skills they might have either previously not have needed, or would have had to hire in-house for. This new demand now means there’s more top quality work opportunities for a broader, more diverse creative skill set.The shift from in-house to finding freelance talent has been made difficult because of the diversity of platforms that creative talent post their profiles. The only way this is going to reach its potential is if agencies and brands can more easily sift out the top talent across these platforms, with verifiable work from those who are being a little more, shall we say, ’speculative’ with their credentials. In my experience, the 80:20 rule applies - of the millions of freelancers on the top-tier platforms we look at, only around 20% of them actually have the skills and background that agencies and brands require - we focus on finding and showcasing these, per role, through a single search, across all 16 of the creative source platforms we analyse.Scott - How is technology helping creative talent find better, fairer work?Russell - Making an impact, doing something memorable and thought provoking means doing something that’s often not been done before. That means the media world is continuously evolving and diversifying. Technology is unlocking new behaviours, which drives new formats and new ways of making those. During COVID we’ve seen a surge of use in technologies that enable things to be done remotely, from script reading and auditions to 3D model creation using drones and gaming technology, to out of studio motion capture.Currently, though, the industry is finding technologies from other sectors and repurposing them. This isn’t perfect and adds both cost and risk. However, these will develop further, refine and become better suited. In doing so, new jobs, new skills will be created - that will need to be filled.From our point of view, we use AI to enable producers, brands and agencies to feel confident relying on our suggested freelancers for these newer roles and skills, as well as their more traditional creative needs.Although we algorithmically analyse the world’s top freelance talent sources, it’s the production, agency and brand staff that make the final selection from our ranked searchable index suggestions<figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://curationzone-strapi-assets-dev.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/1628170915042_5f6c179b93.png"></figure>Scott&nbsp;- There's a lot of reasonable concern about bias in AI. Are you worried that leaving AI to find the right talent might introduce bias?Russell - That’s a great, if not loaded, question. In a way you could look at Curation Zone as a deliberate introduction of bias - we’re actively biasing those who have the background and skills that match their claims, but that’s only part truth. This kind of bias is not new, it’s done all the time with search filters and sorting, it’s just how we do it, and how we balance the data sets we use that are unique. We spent a lot of time working through the bias issue - how we can ensure that someone new does not get penalised for having fewer credits, projects or awards, for example? The solutions are all built into the algorithms.Anyway, that’s not what you asked. Are we worried about how AI will create unknown bias? Yes, that worries us in general, but we have built the platform to mitigate this. Our platform isn’t a black-box, it’s essentially a feedback-loop system, with humans firmly in the middle, and in control of that feedback.Our algorithms help to vastly cut down the number of profiles that get presented to the person searching and make it easier to compare the ones they do evaluateThe AI there is focused on pattern matching across platforms and profiles. From this curated list, humans feedback into our system by the choices and interactions they make. That feedback helps us keep our algorithms in tune with what our customers are actually searching for.<h2>In Summary</h2>In the face of the unprecedented societal and economic changes, the creative industry has seen tremendous changes, with new tools, technologies and techniques coming to market rapidly. These developments are all leading the way to new skills, new jobs - which, in its own right is a fascinating topic.A by-product of this technology success has been the commoditisation and dilution of creative talent and increased cost and difficulty in finding the best talent for the job. Neither of which are good for the creative economy in the long run.A very interesting technology that looks to solve some of these challenges, and drive positive change in the industry is Curation Zone.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.curationzone.com/">Curation Zone</a>&nbsp;is a "platform of platforms", that aims to not only make it easier for the producers, agencies and brands to find and work with the best talent for the job, but also streamline the experience and provide fair payment and work to the creative talent.You can read Scott's in-depth article on the future of the creative economy, where this updated interview was first posted, <a href="https://wellthatsinteresting.tech/good-work-creative-talents-post-pandemic/">here</a>.

From the producer, brand and agency perspective, Curation Zone is providing a one-stop discovery shop to find the best possible talent from across many of the industry leading platforms; including Behance, Vimeo, Le Book, The Dots, IMVDB, Dribbble, Talent Manager, AdForum, Mandy and seven other creative talent source platforms - with more to be added soon.

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Curation Zone Streamlines Creative Talent Discovery for Agencies and Brands

I'm Russell Glenister, founder and CEO of Curation Zone, a creative talent search engine, that algorithmically analyses the world’s top freelance creative talent sources, digitally curating THE BEST OPTIONS into a frictionless, RANKED searchable index.On the 9th August we'll open our doors to our SaaS offering that will make it as easy as possible for brands and agencies to discover freelance creative talent by searching multiple source platforms in one - we currently analyse creative talent from 15 of the world's best creative source platforms.&nbsp;<h2 style="text-align:center;">Today we'll look at one of those platforms, Le Book</h2>&nbsp;As I have stated few times before, many creative source platforms get caught between balancing the needs of a community and being a monetisable source. Making both work is difficult, ask the powers that be at Behance, Vimeo, Dribbble and many, many others.Allowing your platform to become too community driven can make it too expensive to manage and more difficult to monetise effectively. Behance want to sell their community software (it's owned by Adobe). Vimeo, storage for your videos and add ons. Dribbble are after brand and agency money, but to earn that they have to protect their community data from those that are not paying, which ultimately means that they want to showcase creative talent to those clients that pay to see it, over those that don't.Le Book was founded in 1982. I remember their creative source books very well, they were the industry gold standard for many years and I am sure, very profitable. Digital changed that, now Le Book’s website connects top industry professionals in the fashion, beauty, design, entertainment, advertising, and luxury worlds. With such history and respect in the creative industry you'd expect them to know a thing or two about connecting creative talent with buyers.&nbsp;<h2 style="text-align:center;">From what we have seen though, Le Book seem to UNJOIN data in their front end</h2>&nbsp;As a non-paying creative - assuming Le Book accepts you - 3 of your credits will show on your account, for potential clients to see. Pay for a "professional" listing and creative's can post, basically, what they want in relation to their credits and portfolio. But there's a mismatch between the data Le Book have access to and how they show it.Like Dribbble, they "punish" those that don't pay (you can't, very easily, source a freelancer on Dribbble without a paid account). Now, I am not saying that is wrong, but with a model such as this, those that pay will always get - true - access to the client's/creative's, the rest won't. There is nothing wrong with the model, as long as it works and as long as the community accept and understand it.&nbsp;<h2 style="text-align:center;">The real issue for me is, I don't believe Le Book's model is as good as it could be</h2>&nbsp;Le Book have profiles of circa 9500 photographers that we evaluate - but according to Le Book they only have 227 fashion photographers on the platform. Of those, we believe there are 26 full profiles that are accessible. How can that be so for a fashion focused creative sourcing platform?It's a similar story with other roles, take Art Director for example, there are just 24 listed in their sourcing section.&nbsp;<h2 style="text-align:center;">We discovered 10446 Art Director's credited on Le Book, they only showcase 24 of them</h2>&nbsp;<figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C5612AQGTetFse16Ezw/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/0/1627397676415?e=1632960000&amp;v=beta&amp;t=_bUSBufIJ8MqVV2EuQz5yonX2FpH12mXui0sekuR5l0" alt="Le book screen grab"></figure>As you can see from the screen grab above, they also only list 1950 of the 9500 or so photographers we found credited on the platform, as accessible.It's very clear that Le Book has well structured data and super quality creative talent, but the way they present that data seems a bit out of sync with the digital world. For example, 62% of location data is missing.&nbsp;<h2 style="text-align:center;">Le Book, le gravy train</h2>&nbsp;Oh for the days when you could sell big fat source books. Once Le Book's reputation was set, selling space in their source books was easy, doing it online is a different proposition. Sometimes it's very difficult to transition and sometimes you need a new model all together. What works in print, mostly won't work digitally.Of the 30+ creative source platforms we considered for analysis for our intelligent search engine, we almost neglected Le Book because of their own statistics; the numbers looked too low for us to bother with, how lucky for them (we link all our recommendations back to the source - so they'll get great exposure), the creative talent credited and us, that we did not.www.curationzone.com* All data is correct at the time of analysis.**For those of you slightly (or very) confused by the header, "Book 'em, Danno", it was a widely popular phrase that came from the original (1968-80) TV police series Hawaii Five-O. It was the signature expression Steve McGarrett would utter to sidekick Danny Williams, when the criminals had been apprehended."Book 'em, Danno", he would say.

On the 9th August we'll open our doors to our SaaS offering that will make it as easy as possible for brands and agencies to discover freelance creative talent by searching multiple source platforms in one - we currently analyse creative talent from 15 of the world's best creative source platforms.

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Le Book 'em, Danno

&nbsp;I'm Russell Glenister, founder and CEO of Curation Zone, who algorithmically analyse the world’s top freelance creative talent sources, digitally curating THE BEST OPTIONS into a frictionless, RANKED searchable index.We are soft launching our SaaS platform, 9th July. As part of this launch I'm 3 posts into 6 blogs I plan to release by then; each of the 6 will relate to at least one of the eight source platforms we currently analyse - we'll have a total of 18-20 source platforms included as part of our SaaS offering, within months.Today the platforms in focus are AdForum, Best Ads on TV, Ads of the World and David Reviews. 2020 was a bad year for the Advertising industry and a bad year for some of the source platforms that follow their fortunes. All four of AdForum, Best Ads on TV, Ads of the World and David Reviews rely on Advertisers to post their Advertising content, with associated credits, onto their sites. This way they can keep up to date with which Creative Agencies do what, where and when. They can also see what Production and Creative talent are up to as part of the credits that are added to the posts.All platforms are primarily driven by TV and Print data - covering which TV Commercials and Print Ads are made, by whom and in which territories. Without Agencies, Brands or Production companies posting this data these platforms are basically data-less.We use all our source platforms, including these, to gather data on Production and Creative talent, however, much of the data we get from these Ad platforms is a little old.If the last Production talent credit data uploaded to any of these sites was from 2019, as we have found on too many occasions to count, what value does that bring? How is the data relevant to today?A search for TV/Film Editor, across all these platforms brings up some interesting and often excellent choices, however, there is little data on any of them that is less than two years old. A number of the talent, either Production or Agency, are not employed where the platforms claim they are, as most all of the talent do not - seem to - perceive these platforms as relevant any more and therefore do not update their profiles, where required.<figure class="image"><img src="https://curationzone-strapi-assets-dev.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/1623944305723_786d7d093b.png"></figure><h1 style="text-align:center;">The most recent work for Lenny Mesina, an established Film Editor, is from 2018.</h1>&nbsp;It's a similar story across the board. So, if these platforms are of little use for finding up to date data on Production and Agency talent, what is their value?Even basic Agency data is very often much out of date. Would I use any of these platforms if I was a Brand looking at Agency data? No, I am not sure I would.As the Advertising world moves away from TV and Print is there a place for these platforms, as they currently function? They have each tried to embrace other mediums, such as Digital, but without playing any significant role in bringing true comparison.The combined Ad count for Print and TV(film) was (just before Covid 19) around 70% of the Ads showcased and Digital was around 10%. The remainder was largely made up of Outdoor and Ambient. The balance is now changing, but not significantly, from what we see.Combined with the other data we collect, the Brand, Agency and talent data is undoubtedly valuable, but from a stand along perspective, they seem to bring little that can't be found elsewhere.I don't want to sound critical of any of the platforms as they all got caught in the crosswinds of Covid 19 and fewer Ads being made, especially for TV. There has been at least a 50% reduction in the amount of Ads that were posted from 2019 to 2020, this of course is not the platform's fault, but the issue for each of them is, how to remain relevant?<h1 style="text-align:center;">Are any of these platforms going to retain their elevated status, post 2020?</h1>&nbsp;Anyone using any of these platforms to discover creative talent will find that many of the creative's, work at Ad Agencies, so, if you need a Sound Engineer, for example, how do you find one that is not tied to an Agency? As we found, it's not easy - not that I am saying these platforms are there to service this, that's what we do.&nbsp;<h1 style="text-align:center;">The biggest value we bring to the data available through these platforms is that we bring it up to date.</h1>&nbsp;We have analysed over 300,000 Creative's credit data from these platforms, but on average we can't find, on any of these platforms, any credit more recent than early last year, for most of the talent credited.Therefore, bringing this data up to date is key to us and our offering. How we do that remains a secret, but we can guarantee that each of these 300,000 plus Creative's data showcased on Curationzone.com is up to date - within a month. How valuable is that?One final point, up to early 2020, just before Covid 19 really hit the industry, the most active Brand, across the platforms, was Volkswagen; Agency, was BBDO and; Sector, Not for Profit. It does seem as though Agencies are doing a lot of good making these Ads and all four of these platforms highlight this content significantly, we should all thank them for that.Just don't ask them to recommend any of the Sound Engineer's, because they might have retired and moved to Africa, as we found with one significant Radio Producer credited highly on two of these platforms.

2020 was a bad year for the Advertising industry and a bad year for some of the source platforms that follow their fortunes. All four of AdForum, Best Ads on TV, Ads of the World and David Reviews rely on Advertisers to post their Advertising content, with associated credits, onto their sites.

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AdForum, Best Ads on TV, Ads of World, David Reviews: Ad gold or coal mine?

I'm Russell Glenister, founder and CEO of Curation Zone, who algorithmically analyse the world’s top freelance creative talent sources, digitally curating THE BEST OPTIONS into a frictionless, RANKED searchable index.We are soft launching our SaaS platform, 9th July. In the meantime I will be posting 7 blogs before then and one on that date; each of the 7 will relate to a source platform we currently analyse - with more sources to be added to our roster soon.Today the platform in focus is Behance.Apologies to all you analysts that had hoped to tune into this blog on Vimeo (ticker:VMEO), unfortunately, I have had to delay it - now will you please get back to your screens...In Jeff Lawson's insightful book, Ask Your Developer he matter of factly states,"In industry after industry, digital native companies are using technology to bring a new kind of product to market, faster, cheaper, and with a better customer experience than the incumbents."When Behance was launched 15 years ago, it would have been a "new kind of product" that ticked most, if not all of those boxes above, but after all those years of being out in the sun, wrinkles are starting to show.There are new digital kids on the block, see Curation ZoneTo be fair, platforms often serve a different purpose to the one they served before they were sold - Adobe bought Behance in 2012. Adobe is a software company that sells creative SaaS and stock content, so maybe the "discovery" part of the process isn't so important to them any more?Except, when I spoke with Adobe about the platform a while back - I can't divulge the contents of that discussion, sadly - they made it quite clear that they know certain parts of the Behance platform might need a rethink, such as, discovery.It is claimed that the platform has over 20m members, but when collecting data from the site we can only find around 3.4m members. This makes no sense, as a platform for "showcasing and discovering creative work" should surely make all it's members accessible?From what we can see, Behance added 507,153 new members in 2018, from there, the numbers have plateaued somewhat, adding only151,076 new members last year.The top 20 most active countries for members on Behance show just how global the membership is:<figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C5612AQFxmUgSYDrkvQ/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/0/1623335343344?e=1628726400&amp;v=beta&amp;t=JPzqZED0lcS-LWfs3q7Wgufw3RDGmSYz9EmY4VkGJBY" alt="No alt text provided for this image"></figure>&nbsp;The top cities for member activity are: London, San Paulo, Moscow, Bogota and Buenos Aires, which gives you an indication of the platform's diversity. New York comes only 8th on the list and City, 9th.Much of the data on Behance, which is added by the members, is pretty shoddy - members either can't be bothered to add the correct data or the system does not encourage them to do so. Do members add "City"as their city because they don't live in one or because they can't remember which one they live in?75% of what people watch on Netflix comes from recommendations, but Netflix are mostly in control of their own data, to a large degree Behance are not. It's the same with all creative sourcing platforms, to be fair to Adobe. This can, however, make it quite difficult to use Behance effectively as a creative talent discovery tool.When analysing Behance data for inclusion into Curation Zone's searchable index we first remove those members that have fewer than 10 followers. That's around 2.43m members of the 3.4m we can see. That leaves us with 970,000 members to analyse (combined with the other 7 platforms we currently analyse there is no shortage of good choice).There are around 190,000 members on Behance with 100 or more followersOf the 190,000 members with more than 100 followers they have around 12m role credits and 4.7m projects between them.To get to the best of the best, which is our objective (for each of four experience levels), we have to do a lot more work.Without giving too much away this is another part of what else we do to clean up the data on BehanceWe look at the&nbsp;current_roles&nbsp;field, we then look at all of the&nbsp;fields&nbsp;data on the member's posts, and compare them together, to see whether there is a similarity for the projects they have done with what they claim their role to be.We found about 1/4 people shared almost no resemblance between their posts on Behance and their claimed roleOnce we have done this, a few other processes beside, we are ready to recommended creative's from Behance on our platform - before you ask, we don't store any data, we just link back to it.The top 10 roles on Behance are a slightly confusing mix, but certainly broad in scope:<figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C5612AQE-DvdK8_yEeQ/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/0/1623335389438?e=1628726400&amp;v=beta&amp;t=3ocVpjDuxnP4C59g8yq3NBh7TolCIpXAdrlA24W3fG0" alt="No alt text provided for this image"></figure>&nbsp;Interestingly, Graphic Designer plays such a significant role on Behance that it even appears in Spanish on the top 10 list; in 7th place, alongside it's English cousin in 1st place.I say Graphic Designer, you (might) say Diseñador Gráfico, or not.A quick digression. I was in a London restaurant recently. After ordering drinks, the Spanish waitress, as she was about to walk away, turned to us and said in the strongest Spanish accent, "Lovely Jubbly". For any of you not familiar with the term it's a very, very working class London "street" saying. Assimilation or what?There's clearly an enormous amount of value on Behance for anyone looking for freelance or permanent creative talent globally, but it's not easy to get to the best; searching is cumbersome and the results often not what might be hoped for.Having done extensive research into the results of Behance searches, compared with other similar platforms, what we can say is that we have had to put in significant time and effort to get to what we'd want to, compared with elsewhere.This is often because of the way members try to "game" the platform. I am not sure Adobe encourage this, many platforms do, but from what we see on Behance we don't think that is the case, but they don't appear to be doing anything to prevent it either - not to say they should.People are always trying to better their position in any marketplace, especially ones where there is a prize - in this case, being recognised by your peers, commissioned or employed - unfortunately very few of Behance members seem to understand how to do that effectively.With a bit of data cleaning and focus on what's important, the best rise to the top - well they do when Behance creative's are showcased on Curation ZoneThere is a better way and it's certainly digitally native.&nbsp;www.curationzone.comAbout Curation Zone:Curation Zone&nbsp;algorithmically analyse the world’s top freelance creative talent sources, digitally curating THE BEST OPTIONS into a frictionless, RANKED searchable index.About me:I spent 18 years commissioning creatives, I know how hard it was. I even invested in a leading&nbsp;crowdsourcing platform. All that taught me was; it's not the solution, so I resigned from the board and built&nbsp;Curation Zone.

When Behance was launched 15 years ago, it would have been a "new kind of product" that ticked most, if not all of those boxes above, but after all those years of being out in the sun, wrinkles are starting to show....

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Behance: Creative talent discovery platform - Beguiling or bewitching?

I'm Russell Glenister, founder and CEO of Curation Zone, who algorithmically analyse the world’s top freelance creative talent sources, digitally curating THE BEST OPTIONS into a frictionless, RANKED searchable index.We are soft launching our SaaS platform, 9th July. In the meantime I will be posting 7 blogs before then and one on that date; each of the 7 will relate to a source platform we currently analyse - with more sources to be added to our roster soon.Today the platform in focus is Unsplash.&nbsp;In Marcus du Sautoy's marvellous book, The Creative Code he talks about Jackson Pollock's work being far from random, that it's creative approach evolved around something known as a "chaotic pendulum" - probably because Pollock was often drunk whilst working. Because of this rhythmic pattern to Pollock's movements mathematicians are now able to pick out 93% of fake Pollock canvases. It therefore seems as though Pollock's splashes were anything but random and are indeed incredibility difficult to replicate with any creative credibility - whatever sceptics might believe.Du Sautoy also talks about creativity and financial reward, how that when offered $10, students, in a controlled test back in 2007, opposite those students that were not offered a financial reward, performed far more creatively in a test, where they had to give a story a title - I was not paid for mine!So what drives the creative community on Unsplash when they get paid nothing, in direct financial terms, when their content is used or seen by others?First, a quick deviation. It does seem as though Pollock has more of a correlation with Unsplash than might be clear at first glance. Taking a look at the most popular search categories on Unsplash, "backgrounds" and "wallpapers" are by far the most prevalent search terms across categories and of topics, only "nature" and "travel" appear above "textures &amp; patterns" by popularity. It seems as though everyone is seeking out the next Pollock.Back to reward. Is feedback from others an impetus for creation? Don't we create to help keep other people interested and engaged with us? du Sautoy asks. On Unsplash it certainly seems so. Last year more content was uploaded to the platform than any other year; 489,044 pieces of content to be precise. That's a staggering number for a site that offers virtually zero direct financial reward and had only 212 pieces uploaded in it's first year, 2013.Compared with content views, that number is tiny, however. Really tiny.The most viewed image on Unsplash as created by Bruna Branco, had, as of June 1st, 2021 received 1,136,776,549 views - it was only published January 9th, 2019, so that's around 1.3m views per day. Incredible.<figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://curationzone-strapi-assets-dev.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/1622636584279_4f98f2b8f3.jpg"></figure>The top 60,000 images on Unsplash had, as of April 14th, combined views of 322,477,000,434. That's an average of around 5.3m views each.&nbsp;In relation to downloads, the most downloaded contributor is Annie Spratt with 38,210,018 downloads of her content in total (as of April 14th). If each user had paid just 1 cent per download, Annie's images would have brought in $382,100 income.https://unsplash.com/s/photos/annie-sprattOut of interest, The Dell XPS laptop, has 22 images posted of it on the (Dell) XPS page, each of which have been downloaded over 199,000 times, on average.The most successful contributor by downloads per image on Unsplash, as of April 14th, is a laptop, with zero likes.https://unsplash.com/@xpsThis gives some insight into how Unsplash make their money - what they call Unsplash for brands.In January, Unsplash introduced an "available for hire" option for contributors. They also encourage those that use creator content to credit the creator, but it's still somewhat baffling - to me - that so many people choose to give their content away for free.It seems as though Du Sautoy is onto something when he talks about doing things creatively for engagement and interest. In many respects it's an extension to social media in this dynamic. Although it's quite clear how Instagrammers can make money from their content and followers, with over 100,000 creators on Unsplash, that between them have posted over 1,150,000 images, it's not as immediately clear and obvious - Unsplash do give those that are willing to post decent content extensive exposure, which of course can and does lead to commercial opportunities.<figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C5612AQFudUXN3CiSUA/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/0/1622716227296?e=1628726400&amp;v=beta&amp;t=ai51pMa-7vEeLbJ45QVE9zmC2-Iio019SOWAc-YSZWc" alt="Unsplash uploads and downloads"></figure>There really are some very good photographers on Unsplash, but they are hard to find. There are a fair amount of Jackson Pollocks, our task is to remove the fakes from the originals, which is what we do algorithmically. We make finding the best creators easy, comparing the best we find on Unsplash with those on EyeEm and elsewhere, for example.Here's the top three images for 2020 and 2021, so far, showing how Covid 19 and lockdown have clearly impacted what has been downloaded from Unsplash:<figure class="image image-style-align-center image_resized" style="width:743.993px;"><img src="https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C5612AQH1hiMGbcRzqQ/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/0/1622718317236?e=1628726400&amp;v=beta&amp;t=ubm1UZ0vlxYH_82HN7dV8FtLEPdKMxHW12dwffrr8zI" alt="Top 3 images on unsplash 2020 and 2021"></figure>The essence of our system is in analysing reams of creator data when recommending the best creative options on Unsplash, or any other source platform, combining the best results into a searchable index.If you are a leading agency and would like to get early access to our platform, let me know. Equally, if you are one of the "big" agencies and you'd like to invest in the future of freelance creative talent discovery, please reach out to me, as our bespoke enterprise offering could be the way forward.Next Blog: Vimeo: Is newly listed Vimeo [VMEO] ticking the right boxes?About Curation Zone:Curation Zone algorithmically analyse the world’s top freelance creative talent sources, digitally curating THE BEST OPTIONS into a frictionless, RANKED searchable index.About me:I spent 18 years commissioning creatives, I know how hard it was. I even invested in a leading&nbsp;crowdsourcing platform. All that taught me was; it's not the solution, so I resigned from the board and built Curation Zone.Special thanks to Dentsu - especially James Thomas - for working with us over the past months and Michael Schrage, of MITs Media Lab and author of Recommendation Engines and other stellar books, for fine-tuning the elevator pitch and much more besides. &nbsp;

I'm Russell Glenister, founder and CEO of Curation Zone, who algorithmically analyse the world’s top freelance creative talent sources, digitally curating THE BEST OPTIONS into a frictionless, RANKED searchable index...

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