Connecting the advertising industry to the creative talent they need.
The advertising industry is losing talent in droves. We designed this little app to change that.
Every year the advertising industry holds a ridiculous number of award ceremonies celebrating themselves for anything and everything they can think of. It's just a self indulgent thing the ad industry does.
But, we saw it as an opportunity to make something cool and set out to take advantage.
The problem.
There's a creative talent shortage.
As a creative industry, advertising's bread and butter is creative talent. But, these days, many creative folks are choosing different career paths.
The advertising industry is dangerously low on creative talent.
From startups to Web3-through-5 to going freelance, there are endless choices in front of us and these days creative folks are choosing modern, better work/life balance, and more fulfilling career paths to take.
The solution.
Breaks@Spikes
What if the self indulgent awards events could become real talent scouting opportunities? Micro-chances to discover up-and-coming talent seeking their next big thing through a simple web app for setting up casual one-on-one meetups.
Michael was lucky enough to work with super-talented Tommy Korad to conceive and design a new kind of creative career experience for the Spikes Awards, Southeast Asia's premier awards event for the advertising industry.
Designing opportunities to connect creative talent with the agencies who need them.
The Spikes Awards are a week long event in Singapore, attracting advertising's creative leaders across Asia. Throughout the week there are showcases, keynotes, training, parties, and networking events that bring people of all roles and backgrounds together.
The Experience.
We decided the user experience of the Breaks app should facilitate in-the-moment connections. We didn't want to create another job board or an exploitative freelancer app. No, Breaks was intended to create real connections in real time.
We went to work thinking through the strategy and user experience of the product while Tommy explored the creative direction.
Real collaboration.
Our design process was a fast-paced blast. Thinking through architecture, taxonomy, and interactions, while Tommy would conceive and execute on creative and UI design; bouncing ideas off each other to refine and define the concept as we went.
Making it anonymous.
Given that the app was to launch during the week of the Spikes Awards, we knew that a lot of people would be using the Breaks app, but they would likely want to do so anonymously.
Anonymity was crucial to the product experience.
Who would want to run the risk that their boss would see them looking for a new job at an awards event celebrating their work? So we started thinking about fun ways for our users to represent themselves creatively and anonymously in the app.
After some discussion and idea sharing, we landed on an exciting direction. We then brought on an illustrator to bring the concepts to life, illustrating a series of avatars symbolizing the different creative roles that our users would be able to choose to represent themselves.
Results that matter.
- Conceived and designed a smart creative technology solution to an enormous business problem for the advertising industry.
- Developed a transformational strategy for a week-long event for a real talent-recruitment and content creation opportunity for the advertising industry in Southeast Asia.
- Schooled a traditional advertising agency on an agile process to break through industry barriers of what creative technology can deliver.
— But wait, there's more
