Welcome to The X Factor Blog. Here you’ll find relevant use cases for Ideasicle X. Articles on the art of generating ideas while working remotely. Insights and studies into creativity itself. All from the desk of our founder and CEO, Will Burns.
Sounds sorta nuts, right? To ask something as abstract and ill-defined as a “brand” a question? Preposterous, really. But perhaps it’s only preposterous because your brand is too abstract and ill-defined. When a brand idea is formed and articulated powerfully and clearly, then it becomes easy for every employee, regardless of their role, to channel that brand idea into everything they do. Here’s what I mean and why it matters.
Read MoreI have fractional relationships with brands and agencies advising on branding, strategies, and market opportunities. However, I also bring with me the best creative people in the advertising industry. Whenever and wherever they're needed.
Read MoreStephanie Greene, or Steph as I now call her, is the Chief Marketing Officer of an innovative body sculpting company called AirSculpt. She’s an ideal client for Ideasicle X because she wanted big-time creative thinking, but didn’t have a big-time budget. Which is exactly what we provide, enabled by our 100% virtual model with access to 40+ creative super friends. Specifically, she wanted to rebuild her brand from the ground up. And quickly.
Read MoreI met Copacino & Fujikado’s Executive Creative Director, Mike Hayward, in 2015 when I spoke at a MAGNET conference. In January, Mike subscribed and tried his first Ideasicle X project. While he can’t share the client or details about the assignment, Mike was kind enough to share quite a bit about his experience and even provide advice to future Ideasicle customers. Take it away, Mike.
Read MoreWhen agencies need freelancers they need them yesterday, not three days later after they’ve been called, negotiated with, W9s received, an office found for them to work, hotels to put them up, etc. What if freelance talent could be intimately integrated into an agency’s existing creative process, where teams who know your client’s business are but keystrokes away at any given moment and could be coming up with ideas within hours not days? Well, we have the meats.
Read MoreI feel sorry for ad agencies these days. Fees aren’t increasing, staff is getting harder to find, and the staff they have is stretched. Worse, agencies are still battling with the inertia of remote work, leaving their talent all over the place. While we can’t solve all the problems agencies face today, we can help address the challenges of remote work when it comes to creative ideas.
Read MoreFirebrand is the combination of Ideasicle X, our virtual web application designed for virtual idea generation, Ernie Schenck, renowned and award winning creative director and writer, and Conductor, a full service production company, with the singular aim of developing brand ideas with A-list creative talent all the way through to a brand anthem video, and all for $100,000. Here’s how it came to be.
Read MoreNorth Advertising was invited into a very attractive pitch recently for the Ledlenser portable lighting business and North felt they needed to manufacture every advantage humanly possible in order to win. After a deep strategy cycle designed to unearth the brand's "real,” they decided to augment their own creative muscle with a bit of IX creative juice. Here's their story as told by Rebecca.
Read MoreI was the director of biz dev at Arnold Worldwide for seven years, so I know how competitive it is and, more importantly, how savagely an agency will look for an edge over the competition in any given pitch. As long as it’s legal and wouldn’t get us kicked out of the pitch by the pitch consultant, we’d consider it. Well, we have a feature within the Ideasicle X platform that I wish I had when I was at Arnold. It’s an edge that I think will help some of the bolder agencies win pitches, but not every agency will have the guts.
Read MoreMost clients have multiple agencies working on their brands in different capacities. There’s a lead agency (AOR), a media agency, and then any combination of PR, social media, design, and/or promotions agencies who also bring their expertise to the client. Each of these agencies has its own superstars with masteries of their disciplines. What if a client could have these superstars form Super Teams and work in a concentrated way together coming up with ideas?
Read MoreRogerson is a nonprofit that develops and manages affordable housing, independent living, assisted living/memory care, and adult day health for older adults. We have a complex ecosystem and a layered “operating world” requiring different levels of expertise, requirements to market to myriad constituencies, and challenges the organization to speak with a unified voice. Here is Rogerson’s testimonial about the Ideasicle X process.
Read MoreMassPay was a triple decker of cascading idea needs. The named needed to change, though that wasn’t the assignment. They needed a brand idea to unify the company around a singular rallying cry. And then they needed a logo inspired by both. It was a tall task, but we were up to it and the MassPay clients were terrific. Here’s their story.
Read MoreIdeasicle X is a software platform designed to help marketing organizations and agencies tap into world-class freelance talent to come up with creative ideas. It’s an incredibly powerful tool R&D’ed over a ten-year period of virtual trial and virtual error. However, it is a clear disruption to our normal ways of coming up with ideas. As such, it’s not right for everyone. What follows a five situations where an Ideasicle X Subscription (IX) may NOT be right for your organization.
Read MoreThe collaborative "build" on ideas was fun to watch. A nugget by one person would turn into a bigger idea and then bigger yet again. I have to be honest, it's great to arrive at a great idea, but the imagination and collaboration that the Ideasicle X platform enabled made the process more rewarding than the final output. Our meeting with the prospect was a success.
Read MoreTurns out the most potent motivation techniques do not involve money or bonuses or better coffee (extrinsic motivation), but involve getting validation, recognition, and praise (intrinsic motivation). It occurred to me that virtual idea generation, because you can invite employees to an idea project, has a tangential benefit of providing employees many, if not all, of these intrinsic motivations.
Read MorePREEMPTIVE BRIEF SERIES: When we see a marketing challenge out there sometimes we’ll proactively write a “preemptive creative brief” for it and prepare a plan using Ideasicle X to solve that challenge. This is one of those times. Please use your connections to help us get this preemptive brief to someone at Peloton.
Read MoreReviewing brand ideas as a team exposes latent, fundamental disagreements within the leadership team. These disagreements will likely come out eventually, even without a brand idea process. And the longer these issues remain latent, the bigger the conflicts will be when they do finally come out. But here’s the thing. Reviewing several tangible brand ideas as a leadership team has the magical ability of getting it all out on the table now.
Read MoreThe creative power of advertising holding companies looks great on paper. But to what degree does this “paper power” translate to real, tangible benefits to the clients who buy into the promised depth of resources within a holding company? What I know for sure is that a holding company deploying a virtual idea-generating platform like Ideasicle X could bring specialized “super teams” together across multiple held agencies for any given local client need or pitch.
Read MoreAccording to IBIS World, there are 417,827 marketing consultants in the United States in 2022, ranging from pure-play client-side consultants to subject-matter experts to freelance creative people to everything inbetween. How does a consultant differentiate from the other 417,826 consultants out there? By augmenting their offering with big ideas using Ideasicle X, that’s how.
Read MoreWhether you’re a traditional ad agency, in-house agency, or a marketer running a marketing department, you’re always looking to use your own people for as much as possible. You want to avoid the expense of hiring freelance help, there’s no learning curve with your existing staff, and it just plain feels more “pure” to use your own people. But there are times when outsourcing ideas makes good business sense. Here are three.
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