Killer App: Ideas From Talent Who Are All Over The Place
I feel sorry for ad agencies these days. Fees aren’t increasing, staff is getting harder to recruit, 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 directly address the challenges of remote work when it comes to creative collaboration.
The Ideasicle Experts are great, but so are your own talent.
Ideasicle X was invented to provide easy, virtual access to world-class creative talent we’ve hand-selected from some of the greatest agencies in the country. We call them the Ideasicle Experts. We’ve made it easy to recruit teams of four, upload briefing materials, and monitor idea jobs. However, there’s another killer app of our virtual technology many haven’t considered.
That is, use it to bring your own talent together, some or all of whom are working remotely.
No more Zoom meetings for unproductive creative sessions. No more reverse-engineering productivity software like Slack or Basecamp for creative collaboration. They aren’t designed for idea generation, they’re designed for project management.
Ideasicle X, on the other hand, was designed specifically (and only) to bring teams of four people residing anywhere in the world together to come up with ideas. No reason those four people can’t be your own people. The platform gives your internal teams focus, discipline, and an outlet for ideas against your specific briefs.
Is creative collaboration virtually a sacrifice? We have evidence that it’s not.
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You might be surprised. Virtual is better.
Now, you may give Ideasicle X a go because it’s just too hard to get your teams all in the same physical room. And that’s fine. But what I think you’ll find is that individual and group creativity is better suited to a virtual experience. Here are just a few reasons we’ve uncovered over ten years of research:
Access to anyone in the world, be they on your staff or not. Having the right people on the project has never been easier. Even if you mix it up internally with two creatives, a PR person, and a brand planner on a team. Anyone in your organization can work together on an idea project.
Asynchronous ideation means no meetings, no gun to the team’s heads. Creativity is unpredictable. With Ideasicle X creativity can happen naturally, when it wants. Speaking of which…
It’s like a parallel universe, where ideas are posted in the in-between times of day. Your teams may be working on something else when an idea for an Ideasicle X project hits them. Our platform enables idea-posts from phones, tablets, or computers, from wherever they are at the time. Even aisle six in the grocery store. So when they’re not working on an Ideasicle X project and an idea strikes, it can be captured and shared quickly for the rest of the team to see.
No human barriers get in the way of creativity. Because it’s virtual and not an in-person brainstorm none of the unconscious human biases (e.g. gender, race, sexual preference, etc.) can possibly get in the way when everyone is reduced to a typeface. Related, office politics or any form of posturing is impossible when it’s virtual. So it’s only about the ideas.
Online disinhibition effect, or the lack of restraint one feels when communicating online, emboldens the team to take chances. This one is interesting because this effect is bad for social media because people feel anonymous and, therefore, uninhibited when they post. But it’s great for creativity. We want people to be fearless (er, disinhibited!).
Creative people love the fact it’s the one place that is all about ideas and nothing else. As your teams are pushing work through the pipes of the organization on Slack or Basecamp, Ideasicle X can be the virtual sanctuary for creativity. The one place where it’s ONLY about ideas. That gives your teams a psychological boost, a purity of place.
you gotta see it.
I’m sure you have questions. I’ve got a demo I can share and then answer any questions you may have. Click the button below to find a time on my Calendly calendar. Look forward to helping you get more ideas out of your teams.
Will Burns is the Founder & CEO of the revolutionary virtual-idea-generating company, Ideasicle X. He’s an advertising veteran from such agencies as Wieden & Kennedy, Goodby Silverstein, Arnold Worldwide, and Mullen. He was a Forbes Contributor for nine years writing about creativity in modern branding. Sign up for the Ideasicle Newsletter and never miss a post.