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PIE, a Portland, Oregon–based incubation agency fathered by Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), brings entrepreneurs and advertising together to create startups. Not only does it give W+K insight into the startup world, but also it shows startup founders the importance of design and advertising.
business of creating products,” Harris says. “Adaptoys was unique in that way. ... Manufacturing requires resources and skills that go beyond what most agencies have available in-house. Mistakes can be quite expensive, so it’s important to partner with consultants and services that can manage the manufacturing process.”
Some brave agencies have found those partners—and hired them.
Incubator Cookbook
For someone obsessed with helping startups succeed in Portland, Oregon, Rick Turoczy has a dream job. In 2009, W+K tasked him with creating one of the first incubators within an agency: the Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE). It has helped launch some of Portland’s most successful startups, including Urban Airship, Cloudability, Little Bird and Geoloqi.
“All you’re doing is creating an environment of trust where creative people can be vulnerable and open,” Turoczy says. “The typical creative agency types can very much be on the same page as early startup founders, and they share a lot of the same traits and approaches.”
Here’s how it works: Entrepreneurs with big ideas apply to W+K’s PIE accelerator. They bring their own technological know-how and spend three months working on their business in the company
of other founders who provide emotional support and feedback. Eventually, they tap into W+K’s world-class creative teams for help promoting their products. W+K’s creatives have an “observation deck” to watch what’s happening in the world of startups. The technologists learn why they should value ad agencies. In the end, W+K has a stake in the businesses. It’s a win-win deal.
“One of our founders was dismissive of marketing and branding, and at the end of a brand sprint, he completely turned the corner,” Turoczy says. “On the other side, the creatives came to the [brand sprint] saying, ‘This idea is geeky—we don’t know if we can do much for this startup,’ but they turned a corner and came up with great branding. It’s great on-the-job training for both sides.”
Launched by two Intel engineers within PIE, the now-successful AppThwack tests apps to help software developers be more efficient and effective. “[The founders] had this feeling for what they wanted their company to look like and feel like, but didn’t have the creative talent to proceed with that,” says Turoczy. “One of the founders said, ‘We would have never come up with the mark [W+K] designed for us, and there’s nothing more perfect.’” In the end, Amazon Web Services acquired the company. Win-win.
Incubators have since sprouted up in other agencies. R/GA Ventures has its own program for nurturing startups. Outside Portland, W+K has launched apprenticeships, training programs and record labels from Amsterdam to Tokyo. But these incubators are still in their infancy, Turoczy says. “I don’t think we’ve begun to scratch the surface of how this method can be applied in a mutually beneficial way.” So he’s writing the open-source PIE Cookbook to teach other agencies—and people everywhere—how to start their own. “This generation of accelerators was generally tech,” he says. “I’m looking forward [to what] springs up when people understand how to lead this process and apply it to more than tech. You can create new ad agencies or retailers—that’s when it’s going to get really interesting.”
The agency lab of the future could be an incubator that incubates other ad agencies. Hold onto your VR goggles—you might need 3-D technology to see all the layers of the ad agency of tomorrow. ca
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