About
you have to really love advertising to build an idea generating tool for it
See that picture up there? That’s me when I was at Wieden & Kennedy. It was on our annual Founder’s Day celebration and I was on Team 2 for the big city-wide scavenger hunt. We had a list of about a hundred items we could attempt to find. GI Joe dolls with Kung Fu Grip, manhole covers (bad idea), pictures in front of various places. But one of the big point-earners was to get five members of your team (of about 20-25 people) to get their heads shaved. Dan Wieden was on my team and, as he does, had an idea. He stood up in the front of the bus and said he would volunteer to get his head shaved IF (and here comes the idea) one woman on the team would do it too.
The oohs and ahhs quickly led to silence as we all looked around waiting for an unlikely female volunteer. Eventually Dan turned to sit back down on the bus and we hear “I’ll do it!” I can’t remember her name, but it was a producer with shoulder length hair. Dan’s challenge was met. I also volunteered and five of us, including Dan, got our heads shaved together.
As you can see, I’ll never forget it. Why am I telling you this?
Advertising is an incredibly unique business. It’s even a little weird to call it something so official as a “business.” When the product is creativity the boldness required to come up with the idea is matched only by the delecateness with which the idea is treated once it's born. Wieden & Kennedy was a creative culture brimming with the expectation of boldness. It was at once inspiring and at the same time intimidating. Hell, even its annual parties were bold creative ideas (don’t ask about the Greek-themed one the year before - oh jeesh).
That’s why I love this, er, business. Creative advertising agencies don’t just come up with ideas, they ARE ideas. The process of coming up with ideas is darn near sacred. The creative brief better be one page or you’re not done yet. And if there’s no insight in it, then fuck off. What? We only have a week? Go tell the client we need two. Hey, we don’t give the client what they want, we give them what they need. We can’t let the client go cheap on the photographer. I’ve heard all of this, and more, before.
And having worked at Wieden, Goodby, Arnold Worldwide, Mullen, and other creative hot shops, I learned from the greats to respect the advertising creative process. Because it works.
It’s a solid process and has worked since the Mad Men days. However, we were all thrown a giant infectious curveball in 2020 that pushed us to work remotely. And, while many agencies and in-house agencies are slowly trying to move back to in-person work, it’ll likely never be 100%. Which puts pressure on agencies to find the virtual solutions to facilitate creative development with remote teams without the need for rubber bands and paper clips.
IDEASICLE X MIRRORS THE creative AGENCY’S EXISTING CREATIVE PROCESS.
When I first contemplated building a web application for agencies, it was well before that infectious curveball was thrown. Our coders were already coding in 2019 because we knew we had a better way for agencies to come up with ideas, full stop.
Our app was anything but generic, which meant agencies could:
Shop online for the right talent. If you don’t have the right team on an assignment, it’s over before you begin. Ideasicle X enables users to find the right creative minds by “shopping” our pre-vetted pool of Ideasicle Experts online or uploading their employees and/or their own go-to freelancers, ensuring every project is matched with the right high-caliber talent. You can review bios and invite 8-10 creatives with the hope of getting four who can do it and agree to the money and timing (more on “four” in a minute).
Briefing the teams. In advertising, a creative brief is foundational. It’s more than just a list of to dos, it’s a strategic document designed to inspire specific, targeted creativity. While platforms like Google Docs and Miro can house a brief, Ideasicle X goes further by providing structured virtual space for an uploaded pdf of the brief and a video from the agency explaining the brief top-to-bottom. The briefing materials stay integrated within the virtual project, ensuring the team can refer to it and easily go back to it when additional input is needed.
Realtime monitoring of the team’s ideas (as they happen). Most virtual platforms allow the user to see the ideas as they are posted onto the shared space. Ideasicle X goes much further and allows the user to assign an “Idea Director” to the job, whose responsibility is to follow the ideas as they are posted and then course-correct the team as necessary. It also allows the user to assign up to three “Observers” to the job. Observers can see what’s posted but can’t interact with the team in any way. This visibility into the job ensures that the creative teams stay aligned with the strategy and no time is wasted. Impossible to do with traditional freelancers, who go away for a few days and you pray to God their work is on strategy when they come back.
No more day rates. Managing payment for freelance talent can be challenging in remote setups. Freelancers charge day rates, but did they actually work all those days? And what is “working” when it comes to creativity anyway? Ideas don’t always hit you when you’re at a desk. We turned the freelance model on its head. Users of Ideasicle X propose what they wish to pay for idea projects and the talent then choose whether or not to accept the job. It’s not about day rates, it’s about contributions. We see anywhere from $1,000-2,000 per expert for a one-week idea session on the platform.
Seamless online payment process that motivates. Speaking of money, while platforms like Slack or Google Docs focus only on spaces for idea generation, Ideasicle X integrates payment functionality directly within the platform using Stripe. Once the job is over, it’s a click of a button and the team is automatically paid. This not only simplifies the payment process but also keeps freelancers motivated and engaged, knowing they’ll be paid securely and promptly. Of course, if you’re using employees on the team you won’t have to pay them and we have ways to customized the payments proposed (even if it’s $0). But the payment functionality is one of the final steps that solidifies Ideasicle X as an end-to-end solution for agencies and not just a virtual workspace.