Fast Five with Chris Colter

If you thought you knew everything about Pip and Amy's origin story, think again. We learned a ton from Vidit’s “meticulously researched biography” episode of High Flyers Podcast, featuring Springboards co-founders Pip and Amy.

In episode #218 of Vidit’s High Flyers Podcast, Pip and Amy got into some early details of their careers from meeting at a media agency (where Pip literally interviewed Amy for her first job) to building a global AI startup with two small kids, a dark sense of humor, and a shared belief that work should feel like play.

So what do you get when you mix: two agency vets with a ton of experience in creative and media shops, a redundancy or two, two small kids, and a belief that creativity is going to win out no matter how fast AI moves? You get Springboards.

This episode dives into the full journey of agency life, the chaos and challenge of startup building and lots of insights they’ve learned along the way. 

Pip is a big fan of being really good at what you’re doing right now and continuing to say yes to get doors to open for you. You’ve gotta keep evolving and learning and being open because you never know where that could lead you. 

Amy’s thought is that people often try to specialize too early. You don’t need to have one job for the rest of your life. And as Vidit added, he’s discovered his passion through trying different things. You can’t sit around waiting for your passion to find you. 

Listen in for some laughs, some insights on just taking the leap when building your product, and proof that creativity isn’t dying, the value is only going up. It’s on humans to evaluate what great creativity looks like and weed through the average content that so much of AI spits out.

Check out the podcast here: The High Flyers Podcast

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Thanks again to Vidit Agarwal for the feature.

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Who are you?

Chuck McBride, CCO & Founder, Cutwater Agency

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How do you define creativity?

It’s the act, the will, and the want to make something absolutely wonderful for everybody to enjoy. It’s about showing that you really care about the process, the work, and the people you’re giving it to. And wanting to make a difference in people’s lives.

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Is AI a friend or a foe?

AI is a friend, at the beginning.

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Name a piece of work that AI could never have come up with? 

Any John Coltrane song.

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What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever found a great idea?

In an argument.

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Favourite AI hack or use case? What do you think it is good for?

Right now it is better to search with AI and not google. Simple way to up your game.

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Our friends over at Jellyfish built a brand from the ground up in only 24 hours. This was the challenge they took on during SXSW London in June as part of British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) House. With a combination of AI tools, they built a brief, worked on the strategy, came up with concepts and created a full campaign for the new brand in less than a day. 

Jellyfish strategists used Springboards and Pencil to come up with the name, proposition and core concept for the fictional brand. Then the creative team picked up the baton, using Pencil and Veo3 to spin up the visuals, OOH campaigns, and a super fun 30 second ad. 

What resulted was Moodlings, “a premium, mood boosting gummy brand”, and you’ve gotta admit - it’s adorable. We got the warm fuzzies when we first saw the brand. The team developed four different brand avatars, each with its own unique taste and fun packaging. 

The human team included: Tom Roach, Emily Collins, Lucas Stanley, Gemma Cotterell, Sam Yates, Margaux Dalgleish and Sahar Amer, who worked together to build everything from brand strategy to execution using a combination of AI-powered creative tools. 

Not only were the Moodlings cute, the ad also performed well when tested in potential real world scenarios. Jellyfish ran it through their own Share of Model™ platform, System1, and DAIVID, resulting in high scores across the board.

Moodlings is a masterclass in AI-powered creativity. It’s the perfect example of how AI allowed a team of strategists and creatives to get weird and push them to places they wouldn’t have been able to get alone in such a short period of time.

Let’s do more of this together.

Check out Tom Roach's post on Jellyfish here and Pencil's case study on the Moodlings that was featured in Google Cloud's latest blog.