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.
I talk to agency execs all the time. It’s tough out there. They’re facing a dual challenge: staying creatively competitive while also finding new revenue streams to sustain and grow their businesses. We are developing a new form factor for Ideasicle X that will not only improve an agency’s creative output, in general, it will help optimize existing creative resources while generating new revenue streams.
Read MoreThe recent news of Liberty Mutual hiring Bandits & Friends, a small 15-person agency in New York City, as their lead creative partner marks a significant shift in the advertising industry. This move away from larger, established agencies signals a broader trend: the rise of robust in-house agencies on one hand and the evolving scope of the “Agency of Record.” Is that even the right name for these agency/client relationships anymore? More on that in a minute.
Read MoreYou may not know this, but not all of the Ideasicle Experts are creatives. We have PR people, planners, retail experts, and media people, all at the ready to bring their respective perspectives to any given idea project. One of our media experts is Mike Labella. I have always found Mike to be one of the most creative media people in the business. I asked him if he’d like to be featured on the blog and, after he sent me his story, I now know why he’s so creative.
Read MoreBack when I started Ideasicle in 2010, I launched an audio podcast called the “Ideasicle Podcast.” The point of the show was to explore the concept of creativity and I invited all kinds of experts to provide their points of view. I recorded 37 episodes over a couple years and really enjoyed it. Today, I’m bringing back three of my favorite episodes: Beck, Sir Ken Robinson, and David Lubars. They are not only my favorites, they are evergreen in their content.
Read MoreImagine Godzilla and King Kong opened a lemonade stand together. That’s how I perceive this agreement between retail enemies, Staples and Amazon. At first, you hear the idea and you’re like, okay whatever, Staples is accepting returns from Amazon orders. Who cares? But dig into the details and one can see how brilliant this move is for Staples. It’s an idea Sun Tzu (“Art of War”) would be proud of. Let’s break it down.
Read MoreWhile the stock market has been on fire this year, economists warn that stock-market performance is not how we assess the overall health of the economy. And it turns out other key economic indicators are pointing to a downturns. In fact, the agencies and clients I speak with regularly tell me they are already starting to feel the economy weaken. Less advertising business for agencies and freelancers because their clients are understandably getting more nervous every day.
Read MoreThat’s it. That’s the whole blog post.
Read MoreWhich led to a discussion about the importance of “branding” in marketing these days. Was it more important or less than, say, ten years ago? The overwhelming consensus was that branding seemed less important today. And this is about when I introduced a potentially correlating fact.
Read MoreIn case you missed it, I was interviewed by new biz guru, Jody Sutter, this week on her LinkedIn Live show, “Just Ask Jody.” We talked about advertising new business tips and tricks as well as some old war stories. Click to watch.
Read MoreSounds 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 MoreLanguage is powerful. It’s the fabric of our thoughts. It’s how we transfer thoughts from one person to another. It’s used to generate movements, inspire emotion, record history, establish and reinforce culture. Yet, some language can also entrap us, even enslave us if we let it. Particularly when a phrase is repeated so often it becomes common knowledge and is no longer questioned. Below are three such phrases we hear so frequently that through repetition have become “conventional wisdom,” but I believe, sadly, also crush our motivation to remain curious.
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 MoreAs you may know, I enjoy studying creativity. The importance of it, the psychology of it, the ways to improve it. I have a whole page on this company’s site devoted to scientific studies around improving our creativity (view that here). So as part of this study I wanted to ask real people whose creativity is their professional product. What their hints, secrets, and rituals were when it comes to creativity. And who better to ask than my own Ideasicle Experts? The question I posed to them: “How do you create?” We got some surprising, funny, and insightful answers.
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 MoreThe pressure to perform creatively under time constraints creates a sense of urgency and stress, which, according to three separate studies, impacts creative thinking. But it’s not all bad, and the findings suggest an optimum approach to idea generation when the pressure’s on.
Read MoreComing up with ideas remotely is unavoidable these days with hybrid work becoming more and more the norm. But that doesn’t mean the quality of your, and your partners’, ideas must suffer. 2024 can be the year to embrace remote idea generation. Here are three best practices (and worst) we’ve learned first-hand about participating in remote creative sessions that you can start using today.
Read MoreIf you ask the great Rick Rubin, he’d likely say ideas exist already outside of space/time and when their time has come enter our three-dimensional universe through…someone, anyone whose vibration matches that of the idea. Deep stuff, for sure. It seems to me that, since we can’t force an idea to happen, all we can do is increase the odds of one happening. So I looked at Ideasicle X anew to see if and how, exactly, it increases the odds of great ideas. Here are three ways I came up with.
Read MoreOne of the things the great Rick Rubin talks about in his new book relates to fear and how important it is to, as he puts it, “Create an environment where you’re free to express what you were afraid to express.” This statement challenged me to think about how Ideasicle X mitigates creative fear. Here are three tangible ways the IX model minimizes fear among the team of four.
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.
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