Chris Howatson, the founder of Howatson+Company, is giving full rein to his entrepreneurial side, releasing his in-house Unicorn software, a key competitive advantage, to the world market.
Unicorn from Plus Also Studios, part of Howatson+Company, rolls out asset schedules in minutes, freeing up effort and budget for the creative side of advertising.
“We thought for a long time it was going to be a strategic advantage in how we service our own clients,” Howatson told AdNews.
“We realised pretty quickly that AI is going to change the world a lot. We've had this technology now for a couple of years and we just kept expecting somebody else to come up with something similar.
“But we haven't found a lot of competition and we certainly haven't found anybody who has the same features that this has.
“No one did it, and then we thought: Why don't we launch it as a product ourselves?”
Unicorn is now used by a number of brand studios including Foxtel, Qantas Frequent Flyer, News Limited, Myer, Endeavour Group, Petbarn and Allianz.
A number of agencies have also licensed Unicorn but their identity is protected via non disclosure agreements.
The product is a departure from Howatson’s independent creative agency services.
It came about from customer feedback when three months ago Plus Also Studios launched a global offering to roll out unlimited campaign assets for a flat fee of $5,000.
Now brands can use the software themselves, for $1,500 a month.
“We launched it as a $5,000 rollout with the idea that we would keep the technology ourselves, and people would give us their artwork, and we would roll it out,” Howatson said.
“And we had an overwhelming amount of feedback and interest from people wanting to license the tool.
“So that's what we've done. We have now worked to create a tool that we can properly sell as a SaaS solution. We created a separate business.”
The business is called a Blessing of Unicorns, the collective noun for unicorns.
“The idea behind the name is that it describes something exceptionally rare, highly valuable, or nearly impossible to find,” Hopwatson said.
“And so, pixel perfect rollout that takes not a lot of time and effort, and not a lot of cost, is something that doesn't exist. So it's a unicorn.”
Unicorn was created to solve two problems. First, as asset schedules balloon, the cost of rollout draws money away from investing in master assets. Second, designers are spending too much time in rollout.
Since its creation, Unicorn has rolled out over 6,500 asset plans.
Hoang Nguyen, Co-founder and chief data and technology officer, said Unicorn's rollout engine was designed and fine-tuned against thousands of rollouts carried out and evaluated over the years.
“Every asset is pixel-perfect to master art, aligned to strict brand rules and media guidelines, all the while enabling designers to keep using the tools they already know,” said Nguyen.
“With the capability of our tools, we’ve built it to give designers their time back for the work only they can do.
“With $5,000 rollout, we proved what’s possible. With Unicorn, we’re handing over the keys for all to use.”
Unicorn plugs directly into Figma and Adobe Creative Cloud, with no forced workflow moves to a third-party tool.
Nguyen said Unicorn said the software uses deterministic algorithms to roll out all artwork that stays true to the style guidelines embedded in the master artwork.
Jessica Coulson, managing director, Plus Also Studios, said clients aren’t just using Unicorn, they’re making it integral to their everyday work.
“The moment one team gets access, three more ask for it,” she said.
“In the coming weeks we’ll be launching print (via InDesign), animation (via Google Web Designer) and Video (via Adobe After Effects). A number of our clients are testing these services”.
Plus Also Studios is launching a major advertising campaign to build a global user base across Australia, New Zealand, England, United States and Canada.
Howatson is upbeat but also sees the software play as a buffer in any storm on the creative side of advertising.
“We call Unicorn a creative technology company, and that's why we've created it separate from Howatson+Company so that there's no confusion in the value proposition,” he said.
“Howatson+Company is very much about world class brand management, best creative. “Plus Also Studios is about high volume production, almost like what a retail agency used to be, and then Unicorn is our technology business.
“This is just the first of many software solutions we're going to launch. We've got a number of other ones that are coming out in the coming weeks and months.”
Howatson said the software play hadn’t brought any dip in revenue, even as clients save using the product.
“Advertising is what gets me out of bed in the morning but I've always had an entrepreneurial streak, and that gets me excited too,” he said.
“What I'm hoping here is that this becomes the standard and rollout globally.”
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