Introducing DumDum, a new way to create for non-geniuses.

Today, DumDum appeared in the Wall Street Journal, publicly launching our second engine that has been in focused development and actively applied to client business for six years, and gestating in my head for about 30. There’s a lot of talk about the value of a “second engine”, a new capability developed internally that leverages your experience to disrupt your own industry. I’m confident that this second engine will eclipse the first and if all goes according to plan change the way create. But, speaking as a founder and a professional creative…it’s been a hell of a lot of work.

To change the way we work, we need to change the way we think.

DumDum began as a methodology and evolved into a set of tools that function as a new way to brainstorm and collaborate creatively with any Human on earth. Our goal is to re-structure the creative economy with a radically inclusive approach to collaboration. And the good news is, it totally works.

Advertising is the only industry that buys ideas.

When I co-founded Technology, Humans And Taste [THAT], it was with a vision for working with a creative community that connected outside the walls of marketing and “professional creatives”. Which is why at THAT, we’ve always tried to be “The Safe Way To Be Risky.” An innovation company masquerading as an agency. We would monetize our ideas by collaborating with brands, iterate the process I had sketched out and ultimately see if it worked. It did. And I’ve learned that pushing the boundaries creatively goes hand in hand with struggling as a business. Our work has been highly effective, utilized every kind of tech, but bold ideas, new ways of working and really essential strategies often conflict with boring ass media plans and antiquated big data targeting goals. To quote many infomercials “there’s gotta be a better way.” Although it was built inside an agency, the application of DumDum across industries has shown that creativity is a lot bigger than advertising.

DumDum began as a methodology for creative collaboration.

The DumDum method is built on a new creative language that defines an idea as six data points anyone can understand. This allows us to collaborate with humans that speak wildly different creative languages. We’ve even learned to understand and evaluate the feral concepts of “non-creatives”, from busy moms, to Uber drivers, to account people. The value of these ideas is in the power of real thinking from people who often are loked out of the creative process.

DumDum is now a suite of digital tools.

The DumDum tools are built to speak this new creative language and use AI, with a focus on ethical augmentation of human brains to discover pieces of ideas and connect, collaborate and configure them into new ideas from an array of perspectives that no single human could conceive on their own.

DumDum is a new creative process that works for anyone.

It’s transformed the way we work and for me it has totally shifted my focus as a creative person. I no longer “think” of ideas. Using DumDum, I notice them hiding in plain sight. I find creative and strategic solutions in the ideas and output of thousands of humans in conversation with our tools. We engage these humans (creative and non) and we co-create concepts that don’t target people…they are borne out of their own beautiful brains. And together we bring them to life as campaigns, products and experiences. And you can see those ideas in the work for our brave clients like Nike, Pepsi, the UN Strategy Hub, Nielsen, Signal and more as well as our own Originals, like the Work From Wherever Collection and Allpaper: the AR wallpaper.

We’ve been thrilled by our client programs. And more than that, the DumDum community has been incredibly supportive of the endeavor, using the methodology, building a practice, codifying and ultimately launching a product that has the opportunity to change the way we think.

Becoming a DumDum is better than being a genius.

We had to feel uncomfortable, we had to challenge each other and ourselves to run an agency while simultaneously trying to destroy the misguided theory that agencies work. And the result is something very new and powerful.?

As the world learns about DumDum, I’ve learned that creating something truly new, facing the fear and the friction and trusting yourself is always hard. Because doing something different needs to be scary. But discovering something new is the definition of creativity. It is the ultimate joy and I’ve got immense gratitude for all the folks in the Creative Dim Sum and now DumDum community. Big hat tip to all my collaborators and computer intelligences that got us to now. Nahanaeli Nassima , Maddie Lawn , Oscar Ma , Xuan Cheng , Christine Austin , David Kalvert , Mike Weber ?? , Meghan Luck , Dena Graham , Julia Gorbach , Wilkins Fernandez , Tanyika E. Hamilton , collaborators who have supported us like Elizabeth Rosenberg , Nancy Tellem , Perfecto Sanchez and Romy Nehme , clients who pushed us like Jun Harada and Sean Bonthuys , and all Technology, Humans And Taste Humans and DumDums. They’re the people who have proven that for every problem you have there is a solution hiding in someone’s head, all you need is a proprietary AI engine to help find it and real Humans to believe that there's gotta be a better way.

Xoxo DumDum #1