Southeast Asia’s premier content network GetCRAFT has launched a new marketplace to address the issue of discoverability among content creators and marketers, which the startup says has held back the creative industry for years.
“Despite the fact that brands and agencies can now target more than 50% of the world’s population via online ads, when it comes to being able to discover and hire high-quality creators, no progress has been made whatsoever. This is something we hope to change by making what used to take brands and agencies 2-3 weeks to accomplish now doable in 2-3 hours!” Patrick Searle, GetCRAFT co-founder and group CEO, said.
GetCRAFT’s new marketplace connects brands and agencies with more than 4,000 vetted influencers, publishers, videographers, writers, photographers, and designers within minutes. It also lets users filter by country, language, services offered, and categories; sort by cost or views; and pitch projects to either all creators that meet their requirements or a select few.
“Another powerful feature of our marketplace is that it gives marketers cost estimates or potential views based on the content creators or sponsored content partners they choose. Our clients have used this capability to plan their content marketing campaigns. This is something Facebook and Google have been giving their clients for years to help understand ROI, and which we now want to bring to content production and sponsored content,” Searle said.
This feature, he added, brings the industry closer to establishing better content standards by allowing all stakeholders to benchmark prices, quality, and performance. GetCRAFT has found that both content creators and marketers find it difficult to place a value on creativity, leading to one party unsatisfied, the other feeling short changed, and the industry as a whole worse off. “By helping creators and marketers align on the value of content, we hope to spark a Cambrian explosion in the creative industry,” Searle said.
In the last 3 years, GetCRAFT has run $10 million worth of projects for more than 250 brands and will have doubled in size by the end of 2018 with offices in Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore. To help support their Southeast Asia growth, they have raised a seed round of funding from 500 Startups & Indonesia’s Convergence Ventures, and will shortly raise a Series A to help them go global come 2019.
Original article here by Marketing Interactive.