It may seem odd at first, but over the course of Zooppa’s 10 year existence, we’ve learned how to turn this unorthodox structure into an incredible strength.
Let’s explain how.
True creativity is a luxury that must be cultivated and maintained.
An agency’s beating heart is their internal Creative Department, which should be allowed to beat freely. However, in a traditional agency the creativity is stifled because they impose a rigid structure to support it.
In most cases, an agency employs a variety of sales, account, and project management teams to collect RFP’s from the same clients they’ve had for several years. Then then feed these briefs to the creative department, providing structure and support to them throughout the process, until they arrive at what is deemed the best concept. This concept then becomes the centerpiece of the proposal that is then presented to the client.
As you can imagine, putting together ideas for the same client over and over again can become tiresome. Over time, the creative department can get stagnant, lose their passion, and be forced to act more as advertisers, rather than true creatives.
Zooppa has decided to get rid of this cumbersome structure, as we believe creativity is fluid and unforced. We feel that when clients keep their briefs confined within the structure of an agency, they are losing out on access to hungry creatives who are passionate about working for their brand, as well as the variety of ideas and talent that come from outside forces.
In place of the traditional model, we’ve put our efforts into technology and building one of the largest creative networks in the world.
We now utilize this proprietary technology to activate select creatives depending on the client’s brief, budget, and timeline.
This streamlines the process, reduces overhead, and gives clients access to a variety of motivated talent - which in turn yields true creativity.
Thanks to these characteristics Zooppa is also recognized as a Top Creative Agency on DesignRush
Zooppa has decided to get ride of this cumbersome structure, as we believe creativity is fluid and unforced.
There are two main ways clients utilize our platform to create content. After our team analyzes your brief, timeline, KPIs, and level of client involvement needed, we move forward with one (if not both) of the models that fit best.
First, the Open Model
Zooppa was born through this model, which is structured very similar to a creative contest. However, this model is not to be confused with a way to generate low quality content or UGC. Our community is full of professionals who use high-grade equipment to submit usable videos, photos, and gifs. Clients use this content for everything from pre-roll and Instagram, to Super Bowl commercials.
Zooppa works with the client to create a custom brief that is published to a branded page on Zooppa.com. The brief includes the style, tone, time length, do’s and don’ts for the project, as well as any assets that the creatives will need. This is all accompanied by a payment pool, which is typically $15k-$35k+ to eventually be assigned to 5-15+ different submitters.
After the project is live on the site for 4-8 weeks, fully edited and finalized videos/prints/concepts are submitted to our platform. The content is then put into our proprietary management system where the client can easily view, rate and request revisions on all selected entries. Once the client selects which pieces they want to use, full evergreen rights are transferred for use on all channels.
The Open Model obviously won’t be the ideal solution for every project, but it is an extremely powerful tool to generate a full library of on-brief content, while getting a variety of different perspectives on your product or brand. Typically a project will yield 50+ videos, 150+ photos, or 100+ original concepts.
If your brand is open to relinquishing some creative control and wants to quickly generate a large quantity of usable high-quality videos, photos, or designs, then we recommend this approach. It is especially ideal for product launches, social, recipe, how-to, and much more.
The Private Project
If you’re looking at the Open Model and thinking, “Whoa, that’s too much content” or “I definitely need to be part of the creative process” then a Private Project is probably the best route.
In a Private Project, we only engage a closed group of our professional members for the program. As opposed to posting the brief on Zooppa.com, we present this brief to hand-selected creatives in our VIP network (our top members who we personally invite to join). We take the client’s brief specifications, then go through our internal database of members to find the right talent for the job - based on their equipment, location, creative focus and past work.
The Private Project has the hands-on approach of a traditional agency, but rather than putting your eggs in one basket, it opens the door to a variety of ideas for your brief.
In a typical project, Zooppa engages 3-10 of our professional members to pitch for the campaign. Each member will build a custom proposal, all based on the client’s budget, timeline, and deliverables needed (if your budget is $20k, they won’t be pitching a scene of a Ferrari backflipping out of an exploding helicopter).
Once the pitches are submitted, the client will go through each of them to determine which one(s) to go into production. Often times we set up calls with the candidates to walk the client through their vision in more detail.
Production is then done at the discretion of the client. Depending on the shoot location, Zooppa and the client often go on set so ensure the project is a success. Throughout this entire process, Zooppa keeps the members within the budget set at the beginning of the project.
Clients find value in this model when they want to have significant control over the production process, while still receiving a variety of ideas from different creatives. Zooppa’s hands-on management team ensure that both sides are happy, alleviating the pain points when dealing with multiple freelancers.
Lastly, the beauty of the Private Project is the customization it offers. We work to meet all sorts of budgets and deliverables. Whether it’s having 8 members pitch and the client selects 3 members to each shoot 2 videos… or having 3 members pitch and the client selects 1 member to shoot 1 video, we can build a custom program to fit your brief.
So, this is, in brief, what Zooppa does to meet clients needs; if you want to discover more about our projects, you can take a look at our case studies.
