Page 38 - Advertising Annual 57

BUSINESS
Digital agency 360i’s line of Adaptoys (left) utilizes voice-control technology to make playing possible for people who can’t use hand-controlled consoles. The agency prides itself on staying at the forefront of the technological frontier, with gadgets like a 3-D printer (right).
the other end of the spectrum, Wieden+Kennedy (W+K) has developed its own incubator to cultivate startups from inception to exit.
With the development of labs, incubators and consumer-facing products, agencies stand to make a profit while demonstrating their innovative chops to clients. What’s to lose? Quite a lot, actually. In Digiday, former staff writer Jack Marshall notes, “Despite the few shiny success stories, agencies—for better or worse—appear consigned to the services business, and any product forays will remain firmly on the sidelines, used more for PR and recruitment than anything else.”
Although it has garnered positive reviews overall, HUGE Café has a few Yelp raters who stand in agreement with Marshall: “So this is what happens when advertising people THINK they know what people want! Good luck to them and this place!” writes Vert S. “HUUUGE MISTAKE!!!!” writes Carol H.
Will labs and incubators improve agencies’ reputations across the board or will agencies embarrass themselves by going too far outside their artistic element?
Department of Tinkerers
Walking into digital agency 360i and looking through a pair of glass doors will clue you in to its priorities. You might see someone wobbling around the open floor wearing a pair of VR goggles. Or you might find creatives wandering in to ogle at the 3-D printer as it spools out a new plaything.
It’s the job of the vice president of innovation technology and leader of this funhouse to be a tech geek—literally. “You have to have
dorks like me who cannot get enough of technology—that has to be your starting point,” Layne Harris says. “If you have someone in your agency who loves tech and loves the latest gadget, who owns the Apple Watch before everyone else, encourage that behavior.”
Harris spends his time keeping up-to-date on the latest tools and sharing his enthusiasm with the rest of the agency. With a team of three other developers and designers, Harris and his lab constantly prototype tech gadgets. They guide 360i’s creatives and clients so they don’t use technology simply for technology’s sake. Creative directors who glom onto new tech like VR without a technologist are starting from “a place of ignorance,” in Harris’s words. “You’re hoping VR will do what you need it to. You should already have a [staffer] who can tell you everything there is to know about VR and give the creatives hands-on thinking, in real time, and come up with a program that’s much more suitable to how the technology works. You don’t go through progressive failures, but come up with something exceptional from the get-go.”
Through its explorations, the lab came up with its own product by chance. For the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, the in-house creative team approached the lab about giving disabled people a way to play with children. They came up with Adaptoys, a line of games that people with disabilities can play alongside their loved ones, including headset-controlled race cars and
a voice-controlled pitching machine. “We happened to be doing a deep dive on hands-free interfaces,” Harris says. “It was kismet.”
With the right minds in the right place, an agency could develop a product it can brag about. However, 360i is still trying to raise the total $155,000 needed to build the toys. “We aren’t really in the
40 Advertising Annual 2016