There’s been a lot of discussion in the agency world about Peperami’s (Unilever) move into Crowd Sourcing for its next advertising campaign, an initiative announced in August this year with a prize pot of $10,000.

The brief was issued and entries gathered via Idea Bounty, a site that’s well worth investigating if you’ve not yet done so.

Opinion of Peperami’s motives were varied, from adulation for an inspired and radical innovation, to sceptics muttering about headline-grabbing, award-hunting, cynical, pointlessness etc. etc.

Well today the winners have been revealed, and guess what, they are ‘seasoned’ advertising industry professionals.  Marketing Week has the story.

More intriguingly, Peperami’s Marketing Manager, Noam Buchalter, says that a large proportion of the entries came from “experienced creative professionals”.

Peperami has been so “overwhelmed with the level of entries” that they have increased the price to $15,000.  Is this generous?  Well the individual winners will doubtless be pleased, but the real story here seems to be the exclusion of the agencies who would traditionally have sat in-between client and creative ideation.  Sat collecting substantial fees… (for valuable services rendered, natch!)

A shot across the bows for the network agency super-tankers?  It’s starting to look that way.