Rather than relying on the same handful of people to bring home the big idea, we conduct brief-based competitions open to our talented global community of creative directors, copywriters, art directors and designers.
We combine this curated concept development with custom production resourcing to offer an alternative solution for brand communications and new product innovation.
1. We begin by helping our client develop a smart, creatively inspiring brief.
2. We post the brief on our site and invite all or a selection of our community to participate.
3. We evaluate every submission we receive and curate a shortlist of concepts for client review. We then refine the selected ideas, involving the winners where possible.
When it comes to production in all media, we’re ready to lead and direct the process, bringing together the right skills as needed. Importantly, we respect our clients’ agency relationships and studio resources and we’re comfortable handing over implementation duties. Ensuring safe passage of the idea is our primary concern.
Our approach is ideal for all forms of brand communications as well as new product and branding concepts.
Not all projects call for the same creative response from our community. Experience has shown us two different approaches cover the vast majority of brand challenges:
Open call: Brief is made available to the whole community for a wider breadth of thinking and greater diversity of perspectives.
Private call: Brief is password-protected and restricted to a smaller group, where depth of response and particular creative expertise is well suited to the brand’s needs.
We usually allow two weeks for creative ideas to be submitted and then a further week to curate the entries for client presentation.
Brands are granted rights to winning submissions when the originators of the idea are compensated. Until then, the ideas are owned by the creative people in question.
This is a high priority for us. All members of our community are pledged to our terms of confidentiality in order to access any brief and where necessary, they’re required to sign a client-specific NDA. Other options include the ability to make the brand anonymous or run closed competitions in which only our top creative people are invited to participate.
Our entries come from a diverse talent pool: Creative directors, writers and art directors at every level whether they’re just starting out in their careers or seasoned veterans. Some are working in agencies, some are steady freelancers.
Our talent base is truly a global one. As one would expect, many are based in large advertising centres like London, New York, Chicago, Toronto, Amsterdam, Auckland, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, Mumbai and Tel Aviv. Of note: We can also target a brief to specific sets of creative people based on geographic location.
Our business really isn’t a numbers game. It’s a quality game dependent on keeping the best people interested and the best ideas flowing. The number of submissions we receive should be abundant enough to assure variety and small enough to allow our entrants a meaningful chance of seeing their ideas recognized.
Of course we will and we have done so successfully. We see ourselves as a specialized alternative or complement to traditional creative development and a natural complement to the services of in-house studios.