The Idea Auction: Ideas That Cannot Wait For A Brief

Background

Draftfcb Spain wanted to demonstrate Product to potential clients how innovative and creative they could be as an agency.

Historically, when clients put an account up for pitch, they invite agencies to submit bids. Draftfcb flipped this on its head, inviting clients to submit bids. 

Idea

250 Marketing Directors of national and international brands were invited to Sotheby’s in Madrid for an event.

Here, the agency auctioned off twelve very different innovative ideas, which demonstrated how they knew to create work which big brands needed in those competitive times.

Clients including Heineken, Fiat and Coca-Cola Iberia did not bid money for the ideas but the time they were prepared to give the agency to hear the whole idea.

Ideas included the first video game to play with your dog, a speed-dating drive (designed especially for car brands wanting to connect with their female audience), the first gore musical (with innovative branded content designed specifically to draw the attention of young audiences), sales champions (an online store that offered all its clothes for women at 50% only during the Champions League football matches) and the first play for smartphones.

The insight behind the Ideas Auction was that most clients would hate the idea of a competitor getting any kind of advantage over them and so would bid high to get first sight of the agency’s speculative work. 

Results

The idea was innovative enough to get 250 marketers out of their offices to the venue. It generated buzz in marketing and business trade magazines.

It led to 13 new clients for the agency including a number who had no bid at the auction but who were attracted by the agency’s creativity. 

Our Thoughts

It has always been a source of ironic amusement that few agencies ever resort to advertising themselves. Partly because most agency bosses see marketing as a cost rather than as an investment, no matter how much they beat their clients about the head for thinking the same. But partly because a weird creative paralysis afflicts them. You can have fun and be inventive with someone else’s brand but when it’s your own...

So full marks to Draftfcb for putting their money where their mouth is and having a lovely idea about the value of ideas.

God is in the detail, they say. And the detail here is spot on. This idea would not have coaxed marketers out of their offices if it had been held inside the agency; or in a warehouse. But in Sotheby’s, where millions of Euros pass hands each week in the name of art, now that was inspired.

The individual ideas being auctioned needed to be interesting but the most interesting idea of all was the event itself.

I hope it leads to handsome bonuses in the agency for the new business won, proof to the team that advertising is, actually, an investment. Not a cost.