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.
The game is over, the ads have run, and once again we are sorely disappointed. The Super Bowl is supposed to be The Beatles of advertising, the best of the best, the spots with the biggest and most creative ideas. But, with a few exceptions this year, they were flat and/or non-ideas. Yet still cost on average nearly $7M a pop to run. Not sure about you, but we’re tired of it and we’re taking this problem into our own hands.
Read MoreJust this month our crack developer team added some exciting new functionality to the Ideasicle X platform. If you haven’t heard, customers told us they wanted a division of labor with the implementation of idea jobs, as follows:
Organizer: sets up the idea jobs
Idea Director: monitors the team’s ideas within the Idea Stream
Observers: can view the Idea Streams but can’t engage with the teams in any way
Today, I want to share a deeper dive on these roles, what to expect, and how each can add as much value as possible to the idea-generating process.
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 MoreIt’s one thing to come up with an idea. Doing so requires hard work, perseverance, and an open mind. But it’s quite another to recognize an idea as great. In fact, I’d argue recognizing a great idea is as important a skill as coming up with the idea in the first place. So I asked a few of my well-oiled advertising friends to chime in and tell me how THEY know an idea is great.
Read MoreI remember reading the appeal from a Ukraine advertising agency to creative people the world over for the first time. Reading the words from this Ukrainian advertising creative person asking for ideas to help stop World War 3 really hit home for me, as I bet it did with many in our business. It was billed as “The most important brief ever” and man were they right. Here I am running and idea-generating platform! I had to contribute to this calling. And now I want to share the entire process with you, including the ideas.
Read MoreWe call ourselves a “SaaS,” or a software as a service, because it’s technically true. But what’s lost in that categorization is the role human beings play in our company’s purpose. It’s not an “idea machine,” which would suggest an artificial intelligence pumping out ideas. No, Ideasicle X is a machine whose purpose is to increase the odds of human intelligence happening. And that intelligence is anything but artificial. What follows are the ways our software platform is designed to be in continuous service to the real (and very human) heroes.
Read MoreRebecca Armstrong (CEO) and Mark Ray (CCO) run North, a creative advertising agency located in Portland, Oregon. They recently conducted a trial of Ideasicle X and I asked them about their experience via an email interview. And I’m glad I did. Here’s what they said.
Read MoreSince we launched Ideasicle X this summer, we’ve learned a lot from our customers and trial users. The idea generation model we’ve created is working incredibly well so far. It’s what surrounds the idea generation we’re improving. Just recently a major creative agency in New York City conducted a trial of the platform and not only loved the outcome, but plan to deploy it throughout their NYC and LA offices. But under one condition: the platform needs to allow more people to be involved in the process (not the idea generation part—that will remain four to a team—but the process surrounding it). It was an “aha!” for us and may be for you, too. Here’s how the platform is improving as a result.
Read MoreWe all know by now that the advertising industry has responded incredibly well to virtual, remote work. The day-to-day with clients is getting done, work is getting produced, and in many cases relationships with clients are improving. But one feature of the Zoomification of advertising I was curious about was perhaps the most important one. How has Zoom (and the like) affected agencies’ ability to sell creative work? So yesterday I posted a poll to my LinkedIn contacts, most of whom are in the advertising business and got some interesting answers that come with implications.
Read MoreIdeasicle X does one thing, but that one thing is very different from the way creative development has been done in the past. Founder & CEO Will Burns took some time to explain the concept on video, how agencies will benefit, and how the freelance model is turning upside down. Check it out.
Read MoreI was listening to Mitch Joel’s podcast, “Six Pixels Of Separation,” this morning (it’s great, check it out). He was interviewing George Dyson, the writer of the book Analogia – The Entangled Destinies of Nature, Human Beings and Machines. During the interview Dyson and Joel talk about the differences between “digital” and “analog” and somewhere in the middle of that it hit me. Ideasicle X is a digital platform, no doubt about that. But the value in it comes from purely analog processes. Let me explain.
Read MoreI was interviewed by Rob Schwartz this week for his (fantastic) “Disruptor Series Podcast” (my episode comes out in June sometime) and something I said without much thought struck a chord with him. It was something I’ve said or written hundreds of times, to the point where its significance had probably waned for me. But not for Rob. For him, a light bulb went off. The notion, to paraphrase, was that the ideas an agency gets from Ideasicle X tend to inspire more ideas with an agency’s internal teams. And it’s true. Let me explain.
Read MoreMany larger “full service” advertising agencies, through no fault of their own other than growing, can end up as a collection of siloed P&Ls. This wing is for the advertising team, that wing is for PR, and that wing over there is for digital. Oh, and media? You’re on a different floor completely. While this built-in insularity is good for the health of the respective disciplines, it’s not always good for coming up with the best ideas for an agency’s clients. And that’s because ideas are generated within those disciplines and not across them.
Read MoreAn in-house agency at a major retailer is extremely talented but their creative people are incredibly busy with the day-to-day retail output and even if they weren’t their teams admit they can get pretty close to their business. Too close, sometimes. Like they’re inside a wave and can barely see beyond the plunging breaker. So they want some outside thinking to help break out of past creative paradigms. Specifically, they really want this fall’s TV campaign to be different from anything they’ve done before.
Read MoreI need to set an expectation with all the new Ideasicle X freelancers who will soon be populating our virtual hallways. The original Ideasicle Experts all know this, so this is for the newbies. To succeed within the Ideasicle X model as a freelancer, you will need to leave your ego at the digital door. This platform is not about award shows, it’s not about individual glory, it’s not about competition, it’s not even about who has the best ideas. Ideasicle X is what happens when four brilliant people work together as a unit, posting, building, riffing, and inspiring each other.
Read MoreWhat this use case illustrates is that Ideasicle X can be a powerful weapon in a time-constrained pitch to jump start an agency’s creative process. Within days Amy had forty ideas she wouldn’t have otherwise had. And her favorite ten ideas inspired her own teams to come up with new ideas. Amy could have started the creative process organically with nothing or she could have started with ten ideas on the wall. She chose the latter and within a week had four tight, fantastic ideas ready for presentation. And enough time to flesh those ideas out further than the client required.
Read MoreIdeasicle X is the first SaaS platform designed specifically for virtual idea generation. That means a customer can recruit any four people on Earth to work together on an assignment. For enterprising Freelancer Creative Directors, subscribing to this tool could change the way they look at their business. Specifically, it could turn Creative Directors into idea “agencies.” Let me explain.
Read MoreIdeasicle X is about to launch and change the advertising world. We’ve talked about why the platform uses four freelancers as a team, how the building and riffing are the magic, and how the virtual nature actually accelerates creativity. But what we haven’t talked about is the critical roles the customer plays in all this. In short, the agency customer not just a bystander, but an active participant. Let me explain.
Read MoreThe platform facilitates collaboration between creative teams on a blog-like stream. Ideasicle X, a new freelance and collaboration platform for agencies, launched on Monday as a subscription-based product for the remote work age. The platform connects agencies with freelancers or internal talent for specific projects and helps them brainstorm better remotely by collaborating on ideas in a blog-like stream.
Read MoreWe hosted a live webinar in March that is timely for the advertising world still in the midst of this pandemic and remote working. How are agencies responding? How are in-house agencies responding? How are professional freelancers responding? We found out with our round table discussion with some advertising heavies:
TBWA/Chiat Day NY CEO, Rob Schwartz
Blackbaud’s (In-house) Agency 545 Director, Veronica Volborth
Ex-Wieden Freelance Creative Director, Monica Taylor
