Tumblr, at 420 million monthly uniques, has announced a new program today called Creatrs. Tumblr describes it as a art-meets-content collective but it feels a lot like an ad agency. There are two different pieces to the Creatrs program.
The first, and most important, is the Creatrs Network. It’s an advertising platform from Tumblr that curates user artwork and artists to offer brands and advertisers for syndication and use in their own broader campaigns.
Hundreds of artists will be able to get into the action with brands who are increasingly demanding awesome digital content for their campaigns. The Creatrs Network will eventually allow Tumblr artists to sign up and try to sell their art, with proper attribution and licensing, to a brand who will syndicate that content across multiple verticals, from t-shirts to OOH advertising to commercials for the Super Bowl. Right now, though, Tumblr is choosing its own artists to participate in the new program.
This makes a lot of sense. Tumblr has users that sprout up from the masses to find fame or fortune all the time. There are over 100 different Tumblr blogs that have turned into published books. Advertisers are hungry for content, and regular customers are happy to consume this new digital media, whether it’s a blog, a portfolio of gifs or digital art, videos or music.
Tumblr says that it already has 300 artists on the Tumblr Creatrs Network, and handles all the communication and exchange between brands and artists, from legal to payment to credit.
The second part of Creatrs is an internal collective at Tumblr, which will include ten of the brightest artists on the platform. These artists will work directly with Tumblr to make digital content for events, campaigns, etc., but there is one big difference. Creatrs Collective will work toward the goals of Tumblr as opposed to working towards the goals and objectives of advertisers.
Brands using the Creatrs Network are required to buy Tumblr advertisement. Traditionally, a brand will come in with content prepared by its own digital agency and simply buy the placement for its own copy. Tumblr is effectively offering the content itself to buy, and to use in expansive campaigns, as long as you buy a Tumblr ad spot first. In other words, brands can’t buy content from Tumblr’s Creatrs Network without also purchasing Tumblr native advertising spots.
The company says it can take a campaign idea and go from forging an agreement to having ready-to-publish content in a matter of a couple weeks, which is one of the main reasons that brand and advertisers will want to stick with Tumblr as opposed to using a traditional creative agency.
The Creatrs Network is not to be confused with the regular Creatrs, however, which is an internal program. Creatrs will be choosing ten artists from the platform to do similar content development on brands, campaigns, events, etc. but in a way that matches with the objectives of Tumblr, and not just their advertisers.
