A copywriter at a growing Minneapolis creative shop this week is laboring away like one of Santa's elves.
Only instead of toys, Tristan Jimerson's gifts to the world are ideas. One every 15 minutes. All day long. Every day this week.
It's called an Ideathon, and it's the holiday gimmick/brainchild of
Modern Climate (previously Wolfmotell), a creative agency with about 30 full-time employees in downtown Minneapolis.
Jimerson is sitting in a room with a pencil, a Sharpie, a ruler, three markers, three books, a stack of paper, a fax machine and a web cam. Anyone can go online and request an idea, and the fax machine will spit it out for Jimerson to skim.
The rules: Jimerson has two minutes to choose an assignment. Then he has 15 minutes to come up with an idea to address the assignment, and then another two minutes to present the idea to the web cam. Then it starts again.
Keith Wolf, co-founder and chief creative officer, says the concept was about creating a fun holiday promotion, as well as a discussion about the creative process.
"It was really about looking at the creative process," says Wolf, "and pushing it in a direction so the...creative process is what gets discussed."
As of late last week, it appeared to be working already. The experiment earned a mention on Agency Spy and other blogs, and the Twitter feed had picked up a couple hundred followers. The reaction has been a mix of enthusiasm and skepticism.
"Some people," says Wolf, "are kind of scratching their heads and saying those guys in Minneapolis are banging pots and pans."
The Ideathon will continue through 4 p.m. Friday, Dec. 17 at
http://www.modernclimate.com/ideathon/Source: Keith Wolf, Modern Climate
Writer:
Dan Haugen