On Advertising Champions, our host Tony Stanol interviews bright and engaging members of the digital advertising and media community. On this segment, Tony speaks with Will Burns of Ideasicle X.
Ideasicle X is an idea company. We have developed a proprietary software platform that facilitates virtual idea generation in teams of four. In addition, we have recruited a pool of 40+ Ideasicle Experts with experience at agencies like Wieden & Kennedy, Goodby, Arnold, Mullen, and many other tier one creative hot shops, to come up with ideas for our clients.
How do you define success?
If a client gets the chills when they see one of our ideas, that’s success.
Also, when a client learns more about who they are after reviewing 10+ ideas against a certain brief, that’s also a success.
How did you get started in your field or work?
I was in advertising for 20 years and ran new biz for Arnold Worldwide for seven years. It was during this time I came up with the idea of bringing talented teams together virtually to come up with ideas. Launched Ideasicle in 2010.
What’s one thing we should know that makes your company unique?
While we talk a lot about our software platform bringing people together in teams of four, the “software” is still very much human. Four human beings take in the brief, post ideas, see each other’s ideas, build upon them, riff new ones. It’s a beautiful thing.
What was the biggest obstacle you had to overcome in your business?
The limitations of off-the-shelf software. When we started we used Basecamp to bring people together. It was okay, but as we learned more about the dynamics of virtual idea generation we realized we needed to build our own platform design exactly to our spec. Which we’ve now done.