Welcome to the Ideasicle X platform!

When it comes to creating ideas, welcome to a new and better way. At first, it will take a little getting used to. Four to a team, not the normal two. All virtual. No meetings. But much of the Ideasicle X experience is the same as you’re used to as an advertising professional: still need to write a brief, the brief still needs to be inspirational, still need to know a great idea when you see one, still need to keep the team on track strategically without bruising egos, etc.

It’s something you will get better at managing the more projects you do. You’ll learn the subtle and not-so-subtle ways to attract the best freelancers (or employees) to your jobs, how best to inspire them with your briefing materials, how to keep frack of freelancers you like for the next job, among other things.

Below we walk you through the finer points we learned in our ten years of development. Read this and you will be well on your way to being great at Ideasicle X on day one. Hey, nothing is unthinkable, right?

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What to expect as an Ideasicle X customer

Assuming you’ve recruited a great team of four and briefed them in an inspirational way, you will quickly get a dynamic and growing list of ideas from your team that are captured and nested by idea within the Idea Stream (more on this below). Watch for the “movement” of ideas, see them take shape, and intervene when necessary:

• Some of the ideas will start off great and get better as the rest of the team builds and riffs on the original posts.

• Some of the ideas will start off half-baked, but if there’s a nugget there, give it time and the rest of the team will jump in and make it better.

• And some ideas will start off weak and just sit there and die on the vine. Call it nature’s way of separating the wheat from the chaff.

We give the teams the tools they need to get the ideas in their heads out so the rest of the team can truly “get” them. Some ideas will be just typed up. Some will include embedded images and/or videos lifted from other places for reference. Some will have links, big type, small type, colored type, fancy words (there’s a thesaurus tool), and more.

The output of an Ideasicle X session is not finished comps for presentation, but PDF outputs of your favorite ideas nested and organized in raw-form from the Idea Stream. The PDF will include the original idea and all the builds and riffs, one idea at a time, so you can distribute those to your internal teams to further develop and/or simply develop comps. Creativity is a process. Consider Ideasicle X your idea engine.

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Starting an Ideasicle X Job

step 1: input job details

Click the “Start New Job” green button from your Command Center. You’ll start every job by inputting the details for the job. These “job vitals” will be included in the auto-generated invitation to your freelancers or employees you invite to the job:

• The name of the job, which will appear everywhere the freelancers come into contact with the job.

• The beginning/end dates of the session. We recommend no more than one week.

• A brief description of the assignment, which the freelancers will see in the invitation. Note: this is not the brief, but a general description of the nature of the assignment to help the freelancers decide if they are interested in the project.

• Proposed payment for each freelancer (more on that next).

Once you’re satisfied with these key details for the job, click Next.

Step 2: recruit a team of four freelancers

We’ve built a powerful tool to search all the Ideasicle Experts we have recruited, pre-vetted, and vouch for (check them out here). You can search these freelancers by keywords or names. Search for category experience (automotive, golf, air travel, etc.), for specific kinds of talent (writer, art director, strategist, etc.), or expertise (public relations, media, advertising, etc.). Once you search a term all the relevant freelancers will pop up in the window.

Click on any of the smaller freelancer cards and you’ll see a yellow “baseball card” with a short bio of that freelancer. If you’re impressed and want to invite them to your job, simply drag their cards into the “Team Builder” on the right (see image). To end up with a team of four, we recommend inviting at least 8-10 freelancers, as some will reject the job due to timing conflicts or because they don’t agree to the money offered.

If you have people in mind you’d like to include and they are not Ideasicle Experts - employees or your own go-to freelancers - simply key in their email addresses in the corresponding boxes and they will be invited to fill out a profile and then join your job. But don’t worry, we consider your list of freelancers and employees proprietary to you, so no other customers will be able to recruit them, even after they fill out profiles in the Ideasicle X system.

If you invite 7-8 and still can’t field a team, don’t worry. You’ll be able to invite more later in the process.

Once you’re satisfied with your initial list of invitees click “Set Budget” button at the bottom (not shown in image) and a a pop-up will ask you how much, if any, you want to propose paying each of the freelancers. You can do it by total budget, where each freelancer is offered 1/4 of the budget (remember, teams of 4) plus a 10% handling fee Ideasicle X charges. Or you can customize the proposed payments to each freelancer if you really want to sweeten the deal for some. For employees, you can simply enter zero and they will not receive payment (you already pay them).

Once you approve the budget, the email invitations will be auto-sent to all the freelancers on your list. Note: we use Stripe as our financial backbone, so all transactions are encrypted and protected by Stripe’s protocol. Also, we handle all W9s and 1099s so you don’t have to!

Step 3: brief your team

The briefing materials are a critical step in the process, but we make it easy for you. The freelancers are used to having a single page PDF of the creative brief and a 8-10 minute video where the customer explains the brief from top to bottom. We strongly recommend uploading both as both will be displayed at the top of the Idea Stream (where the idea generation happens) for the freelancers to take in and then quickly get to work.

Here are some things to think about as you prepare your briefing materials.

Video. Creative people tend to have short attention spans, so try to keep the video portion under 10 minutes. The video does not have to be fancy at all. Could even be straight from your phone camera. What's important is what you say about the brief, not the production value. Most just shoot a head-shot video using their desktop computer. But the point is to walk through the entire creative brief from top to bottom filling in gaps and providing further insight not found in the brief.

Creative Brief. Related to keeping the video under ten minutes, keep the PDF creative brief to a single page. The freelancers don't need to know everything, just enough to be dangerous (in a good way). We wrote a blog post on writing an inspiring creative brief. Check it out here. There are even free downloadable templates in Keynote and Powerpoint you can try.

TIP: have your video and pdf files ready to upload at this stage because you can’t move on until they are uploaded.

Step 4: finalize your team

On this page you can monitor the freelancers and/or employees you’ve invited and whether or not they have accepted the job, rejected the job, or have yet to respond. Some will respond right away, some may take a day or so.

The boxes of those invited will change color to reflect their invitation status:

• green accepted

• red declined

• orange have yet to respond

And once they’ve all responded, or you’ve given up waiting for one or two, just drag the green cards of your four finalists into the “Finalize my team” box and click the “Launch Job” button. Your final team will be notified as will any of those who accepted but you didn’t choose. Don’t worry, we’ll let those you didn’t ultimately choose down in the kindest of ways.

TIP: if inviting employees or your own freelancers, it’s a good idea to give them a heads up that you’re inviting them to an Ideasicle X job and to look out for the invitation (and check spam if they don’t get it).

The idea stream

This is where all the idea action happens. All the information the team (and you) need is right here. The brief, the schedule slider, the money proposed, the team, the organizer and…best of all…the Idea Stream. Here you’ll see ideas populate as your team posts them. Better yet, you’ll see your team post builds and riffs to each others’ ideas. It’s that interaction between the team that’s the magic of Ideasicle X.

Remember, these are your jobs. You’re paying for them. That’s why Ideasicle X gives you the same capabilities as your freelancers. As the Organizer, you can read all the idea posts as they happen, post builds that re-direct the team, and even post your own ideas.

Observers and Idea Directors.

Also as the Organizer, you can invite colleagues to be Observers of the job or the Idea Director to engage with the job. Observers can’t interact in any way with the Idea Stream other than read the posts and builds, and are invisible to the team. Idea Directors, like you, have full power to post comments, post ideas, and generally monitor the idea development in the Idea Stream. The Idea Director is visible to the team, which is why we only allow one to be assigned. We have found that too many people in the Idea Stream can create some apprehension from the team.

Export your favorite ideas to PDF.

Once the job is over, select your favorite ideas, export those favorites to individuals PDFs below that, and then it’s on to pay the freelancers by clicking “End Idea Session” (top right),

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Payments

The Ideasicle X platform allows you to pay any freelancers once you close the job. Toward the bottom of each freelancer’s card, the platform auto-fills the amount you agreed to pay each freelancer. Now, in exceptional circumstances, you may choose to pay a freelancer less or more at this point, but most of the time customers simply pay what was proposed.

Once you click “Pay Freelancers” the freelancers will be paid through our third-party financial service, Stripe, within a week.

And that, our friends, is how you Ideasicle X.

If you run into a problem, email our “hotline” anytime.

We will get right back to you and help you figure out your issue.

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Customer Advice From An Experienced Customer: Teri Sun

Teri is the Chief Strategy Officer with White Rhino Advertising and has been using the Ideasicle X platform since it was in beta. As such, she knows a thing or two about how to use it and get the most out of her virtual teams. Our founder, Will Burns, diid a Zoom with Teri to get at her IX insights.

Well worth the listen for new customers.

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tip 1: keep the brief…brief

Your goal with the briefing document and accompanying video is to inspire your team of freelancers to solve a problem with their ideas. Overly long briefs are not inspiring. Overly long videos are not inspiring. We find a single page brief is ideal, saved as a pdf. And a video under 10 minutes explaining the brief. Now, that said, the video does not need to be anything fancy. Just a head-shot video shot right from your computer is fine. The video is a great way to explain the nuances of the brief and will remain at the top of the Idea Stream page for refreshers, if needed.

tip 2: Encourage in the beginning, get more pointed later

Very important that the team gets feedback from you during the process. We find that in a typical project lasting a week, it’s wise to be very encouraging with the team’s posts in the first couple days. They are getting their heads around the assignment, playing with it, and bouncing initial thoughts around. You’ll want them to know they are in a friendly environment for creativity. Not to say if something is wildly off course, you can’t bring them back. Just use language that is still encouraging like, “Fantastic thinking, but remember the assignment is…” When you get deeper into the session, perhaps just a couple days left, feel free to get more pointed in your criticism so you’re sure to get what you need. Still positive, but perhaps more descriptive feedback. But be engaged so the team isn’t flying blind.

tip 3: make the freelance budget line up with the talent required

You can customize the proposed payments to your selected freelancers. Meaning, for a superstar you can propose more and for an employee you can propose $0 (you’re already paying them). But in our experience, it will be very difficult to land top creative talent for less than $1500 for a week-long project. You can try and invite superstars to the project and propose less, but just know that you may get rejected so be sure to over-invite (invite 8, say, in order to land a team of 4). On the other hand, you might get lucky and catch a superstar during a week he or she isn’t terribly busy and they accept the job at lesser pay. Ideasicle X is market forces at work.

tip 4: use your own employees, they’re free

Don’t forget you can invite your own employees to an Ideasicle X session. You’re already paying them, so wouldn’t have to pay them again through Ideasicle X. Just put $0 in the budget. It’s a great way to get people who don’t normally work together working together as a team. Many agencies do this to “parallel path” a pitch team with complementary ideas for the pitch (e.g. promotional ideas to round out the campaign). Plus it involves more people in the pitch, which is great for morale.

TIP 5: MAKE SURE YOU’VE GOT THE RIGHT number of command centers FOR YOUR BUSINESs

If your agency is on the smaller side, you may only need one Command Center, as one person can manage that profile, the subsequent idea projects, the previously used freelancers list, and the archive of past jobs. To add Command Centers, just click the little “hamburger” menu icon at the top-right of your current Command Center to upgrade to a Master Command Center. With that, you can assign others in your organization their own Command Centers, monitor their project activity, and monitor spending on freelance talent. Any spending from Command Centers you assign will be automatically added to your monthly bill.