Former VML executives Craig Page, Ross Weythman and Rhys Turner, and former Accenture AI specialist Patrick Rabier have launched Tango & Cache.
“The ad industry doesn’t need another agency,” said Tango & Cache co-founder and chief strategist Craig Page.
“It needs a way to rapidly evolve without losing the human touch that makes work great.
“It’s important to us that Cache isn’t fully automated, but more like a brand-savvy GPS we want other creative teams to be able to drive with.
“At the end of the day, the best clients, like all of us, still value human assurance, originality and accountability.
“Computers have been flying planes for years, but we still want humans in the cockpit.”
Tango & Cache aims to rewire the traditional agency workflow into OS by training AI on a mix of brand strategy, creative psychology and their own experience.
They’re making campaign work through their proprietary OS, Cache.
“Traditional agencies using AI to speed up the same old process is the classic Henry-Fordian ‘faster horse’ problem,” said co-founder and head of AI solutions Patrick Rabier.
“Cache allows us to reconsider the conventional agency workflow without the usual constraints of the traditional linear system.
“We’re focused on modeling useful patterns that make the work better, not just pushing out faster output.”
Co-founder and creative technology director Rhys Turner said AI is what most of the big holding companies are trying to figure out right now.
“But because we don’t have the revenue to protect, or shareholders to appease, we can do it with more agility and transparency," Turner said.
The founding team’s careers have spanned Sydney, New York, London, Dubai and Hong Kong, producing work for brands including Nike, Google, Wendy’s and a U.S. presidential campaign.
“Cache is everything we’ve learned, uploaded and over-caffeinated. It allows us to concentrate on making the creative as effective and memorable as possible,” said co-founder and ECD Ross Weythman.
“Craig first said Tango & Cache as a joke and it just kind of stuck.
“The buddy cop metaphor felt right: brand veterans training a rookie robot partner with savant-like abilities. And it hits our preferred level of absurdity.”
Paige said they are in the process of inviting early partners to help shape a smarter, more efficient way to build great brands while skipping the usual agency overhead costs.
“If you’ve got a real brief and want to try working a little differently, we’d love to chat," said Page.
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