How Would You Improve The Site?

[Commulinks]

Sure they could but in a typical branding agency, they don't have hundreds of people contributing ideas. Our perspectives on contests are unique and we come up with hundreds, sometimes thousands of names basically for free unless we win. There are no traditional branding agencies that ever do that. They literally charge tens of thousands of dollars to come up with a very few ideas. SH built this platform for crowdsourcing, not to become a traditional branding agency. It is a low-cost alternative to the thousands of companies looking for great ideas. The amount of time the branding experts would have to spend "on the clock" to produce the choices we produce would be enormous.

[seezall]

Just call me skeptical, I knew in the long run the changes made were not going to be beneficial to namers like myself,
In short hoping those contests can distinguish quality over quantity

[LauraE]

We have another contest that has specified 8 letters and wanting the impossible (Congrats to the one like namer). Is it possible to have, instead of 8 letters or 10 letters ect, you guys can give CH a range instead? How about 8-10 letters, 10 to 12 and 12 to 15, 15-18, unlimited? I think, not only does that help the CH from potentially increasing the letter amount later through the contest, but it helps namers also who are trying to fit a decent name into relatively impossible small amount of letters..

I hope this makes sense..

[Commulinks]

I can't imagine why you would think that way about yourself, Seezall, but I am sure you have a reason. I hope it is not true for you in the long run. Best of luck.

[Chasity2ku]

In short hoping those contests can distinguish quality over quantity

I thought that was the point...overwhelmed CHs with too many options...a group of experts to comb through the quantity in search of quality.

I'd think this would be a welcomed change for you.

Unless of course you believe a good name should be picked over a better name simply because less entries were submitted.

My point is, the quantity of entries is irrelevant. Especially once that prefect name is discovered. Unless it's a contest of who can get a "love it" in the least amount of entries.

[woods30]

Curious to know if we would be getting ratings from branding team. Or if CH does ratings and then branding team narrows it down. I would love ratings and feedback from a subject matter expert.

[Marye5]

sh is working on some of these issues...the point deductions/favorites not being saved in "my entries" section.i keep getting -20,but not sure how it's affecting my overall points:/..I've lost track and it's confusing.

[RachelSH]

Hi everyone!

I just caught up on everything discussed over the past few days. I am happy to further explain our Managing Services and why it is now being offered. First, we would like to clarify that this service is fairly new and offered to only a few contests as a paid service. This service targets larger businesses or customers who would prefer our team monitor and conduct the contest rather than themselves. We have found that the most successful contests have well written and informative briefs, continuous feedback from the CH, and rated entries with comments explaining the reason for the given rating. I’m sure you can all agree with at least one of those! Our team’s goal is to limit the amount of contests that either end up abandoned or not selecting a winner with the intentions of using the entry.

We offer the Managing Service and our team of branding experts to CHs as an aid or guide through the contest. Our team’s ultimate goal is to make the contest go smoother for the CH. I think @Commulinks touched on what our reasoning was for this service, our crowdsourcing platform is beneficial to CHs because of the hundreds of entries you all so kindly provide! But sometimes it can get overwhelming of the CH, and entries can be overlooked. Our team of branding experts’ job is to act on behalf of the CH to keep up with the contest and provide the feedback our creatives need to submit the best entries! Our daily feedback to them will consist of discussing the rated entries. I think it is important to clarify that these contests will be set up no different than any other contest. The CH has complete control and access to their contest. For example, Even though our team might have rated an entry (already or differently than they would have) they can go in and change the ratings...we are only assisting them.

This is only one of the services we are going to offer to improve the site. In the future, we plan to offer a Professional Project Brief service to help CHs with creating a detailed brief. We appreciate and value all of your feedback. A lot of what we implement into the platform comes from all of you in hopes to make your time spent at SH easier and more fun!

Thanks,
-Rachel

[Commulinks]

This is really awesome and definitely sets SH apart. Thanks Rachel and the team!

[hollygirl]

I have to play devil's advocate for a minute...why would another "team" rate our entries instead of the CH? They don't know what the CH likes anymore than we do.That to me would be like other creatives here rating our entries..which is why I don't name with a competitor of yours.
I could understand them giving input or direction..but as far as them rating our entries..I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that.

Plus who is this team? What credentials do they have, please? I fear that if they reject or rate a name of ours low..then the CH won't go back thru them and "rescue" names that have potential for their contest, or they may like.I think some good names, especially if they are creative names and not run of the mill, will be overlooked.

[ChristyMay]

I think that transparency has always been a word used here to describe SH, but I feel like this is not very transparent. It would be nice to meet the team of internal branding experts and to know a bit more about the process involved. We are spending a great deal of time and effort trying to come up with the perfect names according to the briefs being presented and now there is an entirely new dynamic and it would be nice to know what this is. I do think it is a good idea but would like to have a clearer picture. For instance, if I get an "on the right track" who is this coming from ? The CH or the internal branding team ? Do I adjust my name towards the brief or am I adjusting to opinions of a branding team that I don't know and may have a completely different set of knowledge ? I am not sure if it is just me, but would really like to have a bit more information. Thank you. A part of me also wonders what is my role here if you have a team working with the CH, why would you need my input at all ?????

[BrendaGravermoen]

@RachelSH The only concern I have with the branding experts rating our entries is if they rate it, "on the right track" or "don't like it". It's been my understanding, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong, that the CH can use those ratings so that they are lowered on the list of entries and the CH doesn't have to continuously see those entries. IF that is the case, then it could be possible that a name that does not appeal to the branding experts, might be exactly what the CH is looking for, and with the branding experts rating it is "don't like it" or "on the right track" that it decreases the likelihood of the CH seeing the name in the first place.

[Chasity2ku]

A part of me also wonders what is my role here if you have a team working with the CH, why would you need my input at all ?????

The creatives don't offer input, they offer names, taglines, logos, etc.

The branding team doesn't offer names, taglines, logos, etc., they offer input to the CH to aid in their selection.

So your role is to supply the best entries you can 🙂

[Dan]

Hi everyone,

I would like to share some more context to address some of the concerns related to branding experts.

First of all, at this stage we don't expect more than 2-3 contests in a month (out of several hundred) where we would offer the service of shortlisting entries. As Rachel pointed out, this Beta offering is planned for those companies which are looking for an assisted management of their contest.

Furthermore, whenever we have our branding team involved in shortlisting the submissions, we would state that upfront in the contest messaging section.

We heard from creatives in our previous topic that they would rather not have other creatives involved in voting of entries. We agree with that feedback, and therefore have decided not to engage other creatives in any voting or shortlisting of entries in order to respect the privacy of everyone's submissions.

The role of our branding team is to ensure our contests are successful and in most cases, this will revolve around activities such as professional brief creation, or consolidating the feedback, comments or questions for contest holders and proactively following up with them if we find that there are lot of entries that haven't received rating or feedback.

The shortlisting of entries will only be offered in those few contests where the companies do not have the ability to go through all the submissions themselves and they currently outsource those functions to other consultants. In some cases, this function is currently performed by administrative assistants who are not the final decision makers and we believe that our team can add value in those situations by ensuring a much more comprehensive feedback process.

In order to allow multiple team members to manage the contests, we have also recently introduced a team management feature so that the process of shortlisting and rating can happen directly on our contest page, instead of offline by sharing excel spreadsheets between team members and co-workers.

These changes are not designed to replace the role of creatives, but instead are being done to ensure a higher likelihood of contest success and reduce abandonment.

As far as the issue of transparency is concerned, we are announcing these changes in advance of implementing them so that we can keep the creative community informed about our plans (even though some of these plans can be seen by our competitors). We appreciate and welcome the feedback from the community and we are committed to improving our platform based upon that feedback.

[rareworthy]

I haven't been here as long as others and I know I can be opinionated at times -- but some of us can be. I think my life and my position in said life has made me a moral and fairness advocate -- self-proclaimed and more reflex than purposeful. But I still stand for things being as equal and as fair as possible. While I see the good sides of this and can truly appreciate a service like this, I -- like several others see some keywords that have been said that make me think this could be potentially slippery slope.

I agree that something like this can be done but I believe that it has to be done fairly. The thing I would like better explained is the ability for this 'team' to rate entries and such and yes the CH 'can go back and change ratings' but here's the double entendre of the situation. Why do CHs possibly need this service? because 'it can be overwhelming'. Okay so if it can be so overwhelming and this team is allowed to rate entries, what is saying that even going back over what entries the team has rated isn't going to be 'overwhelming' as well? Doesn't this leave big opportunity for the team to do all the work and the CH to just let the cards fall where they fall because they are 'experts' and would probably 'assumedly' make 'better decisions'? I don't think this could be good, because I will stand behind that the CH over anyone else will know ultimately what they want but most of the time don't. That's part of the reason why the process is so overwhelming for them, because they don't know what they want sometimes, and don't know sometimes until the lightbulb goes off over certain entries (which is why their ratings and the names chosen can be so far away from the original brief).

But I don't see the fairness in allowing the team to offer 'ratings' at all. This should be on the CH. Advice is good, and even beneficial. Helping focus is great because we all know feedback is something that is always usually lacking and all the feedback we usually get is a smiley or frown face of various sorts when that offers us no help whatsoever and doesn't make our volunteers suggestions of possibilities any easier. Guidance on briefs and feedback, and checking in -- all of that perfect because almost all contests and CHs could use this. But rating or commenting, no matter how much it is needed, should be left to the CH. Maybe nudge them to check in, 'you have entries to rate/comment on and it's been two days since you've checked in" type of thing. But not rating them outright. Because there are going to be those ones that if you are an 'expert' and you do the things for them, then they will just leave it as is assuming that the expert knows best than them and its their business/brand/product and shortlists or whatnot are based on other opinions that are only involved for the service.

I fully believe in the thought that this is their business/product/service/brand and branding is a major part of holding such. It's not something to be laissez-faire about, it is something that they should devote time and attention to. If it's overwhelming, yes advice could help, but if they want to use something like crowdsourcing then it needs to be understood that decision comes with that and the ability to make such and do actions related to such like going through hundreds or a thousand name suggestion entries is just one of those things. It's something they have to do, though. I agree with them being offered the help when needed but not making decisions for them that could stick permanently, which I am sorry, rating an entry just under the guise that they could go back and look over all the ones rated later is assuming unfairly that they will. A decision that is unfair to them and unfair to us. Rating is a decision and decisions should be entirely on the CH.

Then again, I could be misunderstanding the process but that, to echo @ChristyMay isn't still very transparent and still can be a bit confusing. So if I am wrong I apologize and bow out and again this is only opinion and I'm not completely against the idea, it just needs to be fair.

[Chasity2ku]

Like they said it's only going to be 2-3 contests at a time and you can just skip those, it's not like they're making every contest this way. In fact 2-3 seems like a very small # when you consider how many contests are running at any given time. But more importantly it's an opportunity for us (the creatives) to explore this contest style and provide the SH team with our opinions so they can assess and change as needed, or maybe even cancel...who knows!? If they were forcing this on all or a large amount of contests I think it'd be a different story, but they're not, so I'd like to encourage everyone to atleast try it, or allow other creatives to try it before we shoot it down. Don't get me wrong, everyone's concerns are valid, but give it a try...it's only a few, and you might find you like it!

Plus, haven't y'all ever read a brief or entered a contest that was obviously created and managed by someone other than the final decision maker? I have, and I can only imagine how many I've entered that weren't obvious and I had no clue. So rather it's being "co-managed" by SH or not, it's still going to happen. But at least this way the process is aided by a SH team that DOES understand the ins and outs of the process. Many of us have complained on more than one occasion that the CHs lack of knowledge of the process is stifling to the process.

I'd personally rather a SH team aiding/rating etc over someone appointed by the final decision maker that we TRULY know nothing about! In those situations we won't know if it was 1, 2, 3, or 50 people rating and short-listing our entries, if they're a receptionist at the front desk of the business being named or a branding expert hired outside the company that knows the CH no better than the SH team would, let alone if it's even the actual decision maker or not. This way we'll be guaranteed to know if it's being "co-managed" or not, and promised a group of branding experts that know the process well on both sides!

Same thing for the concern of SH rating and the CH not caring to go back and see if they disagree. I've seen contests that have more than one person rating and commenting. In that situation there is no guarantee the other/others will go back to second guess their colleague either.

I'm just trying to get everyone with concerns to see this really changes nothing. These things will happen regardless, and since there is no changing that you'd better believe I'd rather the people aiding be a SH team that has a knowledge and understanding of both the creative and CH side.

If you can understand these things are already happening then you can appreciate this as a win-win situation for everybody!

[AlwriteyThen]

...they said it's only going to be 2-3 contests at a time and you can just skip those, it's not like they're making every contest this way.

...And that's the bottom line, I suppose - We aren't being "forced" to participate in these projects, so we have the option of participating in them or not.

[Commulinks]

We heard from creatives in our previous topic that they would rather not have other creatives involved in voting of entries. We agree with that feedback, and therefore have decided not to engage other creatives in any voting or shortlisting of entries in order to respect the privacy of everyone's submissions.

I really, really appreciate that we did not move in that direction and I think having a new product that can do things that other sites are not doing is great. The sites where creatives vote on names are really terrible. I've seen a lot of "boaty mcboatface" kinds of names over there. They still have abandoned contests and I don't know what the CHs actually choose but I cannot imagine that any of the voting is helpful to them at all.

I've already seen some CHs on SH say they are getting some help from SH in making their final decisions through other methods, too. I'm all for it.

In the end, I can see that there would be potential CHs who would use this service who would otherwise not use SH.

Thanks to the team for doing this.

[Chasity2ku]

Yes, and I've had other priorities the last couple months that have drastically reduced my contest participation so I plan to focus on these "aided" contests as I'd like to give them a test run and provide feedback because I know it will be heard by the right people 🙂

Which inclines me to ask...@rachelsh, when can we expect to see them and will they be included in the search features? Thank you!

[Chasity2ku]

Boaty mcboatface.......😂😂 that was funny!!