As the world is constantly evolving, also advertising is changing, and thus also the way advertising agencies work. I’m applying agile already a few years in software development, but when I read Google’s article on Agile Creativity a year ago, it felt as if they ran off with my island in the Caribbean.
Art, copy and code
One of the concepts of Agile Creativity is simple: change the archetypical team of art director and copywriter, by adding a technologist. So art+copy becomes art+copy+code. Google started talking about agile creativity in August 2012, but went a step further when last March they launched their “Art, Copy and Code“-project, as the follow up for the highly acclaimed Project Re: Brief.
One of my agency’s key projects the last 6 months happens to be a perfect example of art, copy and code. The basic idea was to make it possible for physically disabled people to make music with their brainwaves. This idea in its purest form came from such an archetypical team. From the moment the idea was mentioned, we immediately teamed them up with a developer.
In order to explore the idea as quick as possible, we ordered the cheapest EEG headset we could find, to try out the technology and acquire affinity. The next step was to take this into production, and we started collaborating with a neurotechnology expert and an Ableton (music software) programmer.
Magic
But we didn’t remove the developer from the team after production started. This is where the most interesting stuff happened. The developer became like a technological addendum to the team. He kept following the project and kept working as an equal team member together with the art director and the copywriter. And this was where the real magic happened. It allowed the whole team (also account managers, project managers, etc.) to have a continuous point of contact for everything related to technology and its impact within the project. Pushing the overall quality of work to an unseen level.
I could go one a few more paragraphs, but I guess the best way to prove the efficiency of this approach is to show the result.
Enjoy!