Ignacio Oreamuno
President
GiantHydra
A lot has transpired in the past short while in the world of Giant Hydra. Some of the highlights include having two globe-spanning teams of HydraHeads help on a major pitch for a renowned agency, assisting an agency in London craft an ideal name for one of their clients’ brands, and working with a Toronto-based company on several TV spots which are now in the hands of some esteemed directors. We are getting ready to start an exciting project for a Dutch company looking to overhaul their traditional marketing efforts in the world of social media, and there are a number of other projects on the horizon. It’s been a wild ride, and after having spent so many years thinking about how to evolve the creative process, to use new technologies that encourage mass collaboration, it’s nice to actually see I wasn’t crazy. It works.
“How can we bill our client six million dollars a year when you can do the creative development of a campaign with Giant Hydra in a quarter of the time for only a fraction of the cost?”
When Giant Hydra became a reality, I began sharing it with friends of mine who were creative directors, gauging their feelings about such a project. “How can we bill our client six million dollars a year when you can do the creative development of a campaign with Giant Hydra in a quarter of the time for only a fraction of the cost?” asked the founding partner of one of Toronto’s top advertising agencies.
The answer is raw and hard and it stings a bit, because change is inevitable, like an approaching monster tsunami wave. You may not like change, but change is indifferent about whether you like it or not. Change will show up at your house party, not bring any wine or beer, and eat up all the chips and mini-sandwiches. And Change can be the life of the party or it can screw up your good times, but it’s coming, with or without an invite.
But few industries are as resistant to change as Madison Avenue. Even though the ad biz is barely a century old, we assume that the model we have used to concept ideas for many of those years will be the last one we’ll ever need.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good model. As a former art director, I deeply respect the legendary Bill Bernbach’s idea of pairing art directors and copywriters. I’ve been there, late at night, drawing thumbnails on little while papers, shooting ideas back and forth with my partner. It’s great fun, but it’s flawed for modern times. A campaign is no longer a funny idea with a tagline spread across TV, radio and print. Today a campaign could include anything from an interactive game, to a social media platform, to an online show, to an interactive television commercial on Twitter. Two people, one that specializes in pictures and the other in words, are no longer the right combination for the task at hand. It’s our job as agencies to be open to new combinations, new methods, cheaper and better ways of doing things for clients.
When an agency engages in a big assignment, whether it’s a new business pitch or a big project for an existing client, they usually start by assigning several creative teams to the brief. They might seem like they are all working towards a single goal, but creative politics will have them competing rather than collaborating. If Team A wrote a TV script, it’s implied that it’s their baby, and Team B cannot enhance that TV script, modify it or generally add to that idea. Who would go to the shoot? Whose names go on the awards entry? Who’d climb the stage at Cannes? Ideas are owned in today’s system, but should they be?
The new creative process Giant Hydra is trying to forge is one where anybody in the team can help an idea grow, and average ideas can grow into great ones rather quickly. It’s a process that is transparent to all involved, and everyone from account people to strategists to social media people participate in the creative process. The result has agencies and clients receiving massive amounts of high quality ideas in less time and at lower costs. The agency retains its leadership role, remaining in charge of crucial elements such as media and production. The agency develops and maintains strategies, and of course continues to foster its relationship with the client. The only major change is that the conceptual process is handled by the best and most talented people available in the world.
“So it’s kinda like crowdsourcing?” That’s another thing some industry heads have asked when hearing about Giant Hydra. The definition of crowdsourcing is still very grey, but to me, crowdsourcing is when a large group of people work independently on a task, all trying to come up with that one magical idea. In the end, one or two ‘winners’ get rewarded, but the bulk of the team gets a “thanks for coming out”, their many invested hours for naught. Imagine if those team members were actually working together, helping to make every idea a winner, not just a few.
What Giant Hydra achieves has nothing to do with that interpretation of crowdsourcing, but rather it’s an exercise in mass collaboration. Rather than opening up a creative brief to hundreds of unvetted people, each hoping to claim the Golden Ticket, a Giant Hydra project consists of a group of highly skilled pre-screened professionals working on a confidential assignment together online. Each “HydraHead” is remunerated equally and fairly for their work. Giant Hydra is still fairly new, but from what I’ve seen, everyone seems to be having a good time while at it. It’s extremely energizing to step away for lunch with 145 ideas on display, only to return an hour later and see twenty brand new ideas and fifteen older ideas have been modified, commented on and improved.
“The real agency of the future is not 300 people in a building, but a small team of 30 highly skilled, well-paid professionals that get support and ideas from a system like Giant Hydra.”
I recently showed Giant Hydra to the Worldwide CCO of one of the most respected agency networks in the world. “You know, people think we’re the agency of the future, but I don’t think we are,” he said. “The real agency of the future is not 300 people in a building, but a small team of 30 highly skilled, well-paid professionals that get support and ideas from a system like Giant Hydra.” So the ‘agency of the future’ is essentially the same as before, but just a lot more efficient in using a client’s resources. That’s not a terrible thing. Isn’t that what we’re trying to do in everyday when we drive our Toyota Priuses to get some more energy efficient lightbulbs?
We’re in the creative industry, so let’s be creative about how we do creative.
