• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, December 5, 2011

In a keynote address at the MediaPost Email Insider Summit, Threadless CMO Cam Balzer says the Chicago T-shirt company has been a leader for a decade in crowd-sourcing. There’s a new “marketing democracy” going on and he says: “Most of the time, it feels almost like occupying Madison Avenue.”

When Balzer joined the company, the only marketing it did was email marketing. It has built its success on word of mouth.

It pays $2,500 to a designer when one of their T-shirts is used. That causes it to lose money in the short term, but "it creates this engine and this dynamo" and it prompts designers to encourage one another to participate.

Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr have helped the company “amplify word of mouth online.”