Pereira O'Dell Curated a Network of Creators to Produce On-Demand Social Content for Brands

Pereira O'Dell co-founder and creative chairman PJ Pereira was recently faced with a dilemma: clients were increasingly seeking custom content to feed their various social media channels on a frequent basis. A bit too frequently, in fact, for the agency to manage larger, more fulfilling projects. Neither side was benefitting from the creative agency handling such work. The agency was forced to spend considerable time and resources creating content that doesn't generate much revenue, and that can be tedious at times. Meanwhile, brands were forced to go through the same extensive briefing process necessary for a national campaign on content that needed a quick turn around. "If an agency goes through the same process for a $10,000 production that they go through for a $600 production, it will never work," Pereira told Adweek during a recent visit to the agency's New York office. "The time, money, energy spent does not work." So, Pereira and his team conjured up a solution: create a network that connects brands to quality creators who can turn social content around in just two weeks' time. Voilà! Briefly was born. [kickout id="2"] Any brand (and, theoretically, any agency) can submit a brief for the social content they need on the site whether or not they are a client of Pereira O'Dell's. Right now only static images are being accepted, but features for moving images and videos are in development. The brief is then emailed to a network of creators who can choose to submit an idea, or a "treatment." The brand then chooses the treatment it likes best. "The idea came out of an insight," Henry Arlander, Pereira O'Dell director of innovation, told Adweek. "How do we as an agency help you prepare for the world today? ... Every brand needs to be on social media. It’s ever expanding, and ideally, you have content for each of those feeds multiple times a week with content that is unique to each channel. So the need for content has ballooned and the budgets haven't followed." Arlander described Briefly as the "Uber for social content." Coca-Cola, Allbirds, Rover and the Ad Council are amongst the companies that have used the site since its soft launch last fall. Briefly is designed to make creating and submitting a brief quick and painless. It includes scales to gauge the tone of the content, key demographics the brand aims to target and an area to add specific requests if necessary. Once a brand selects a treatment, it will work directly with creators to note any specifics that it did not include in the original brief and request any changes once the content is returned. They get two weeks to complete the project. The creators can also address any questions they have or additional costs they may request regarding things such as travel expenses, for example. Another point of difference for Briefly compared to other existing networks is that the creators—of which there are currently 50 with a goal of eventually reaching 500—are all carefully curated by Pereira O'Dell, so brands know they have been vetted for the quality of their work. Plus, Arlander and Pereira both stressed that this is by no means another influencer network. Content is made to live on the brand's social media channels, not the creator's. [kickout id="1"] "We’re curating a very small network that's handpicked and limited to 500 creators. And we've only let in 15% to 20% of the people who applied," Arlander explained. He continued, "These creators are chosen for the quality of their content. It has nothing to do with their following. You’ve got a lot of content creators out there who haven’t built up their following on Instagram or whatever so they haven’t been able to earn money in these influencer networks so this is a perfect spot for them." Pereira added that there are also creators who just flat-out don't want to be influencers, which would require them to be spokespeople for brands they may not genuinely want to endorse. Most have expressed to the agency that they would be willing to create more content for brands if they didn't have to commit to using their own feeds to promote that content. "The experience has to be good on both sides," Pereira said. "These creators do whatever they want to do. They don’t have a machine to feed. Both sides can step out at any time, and we need to let them do it." To ensure its creators are getting the most out of the site, Arlander said Briefly will also be growing its network organically as "we want to make sure they have enough work to stay engaged." Once the network is larger and the briefs are coming in more frequently, Arlander said Briefly can create specialty groups so creators' inboxes aren't regularly bombarded with an onslaught of briefs. For its part, Pereira O'Dell does not get involved in the relationships brands develop with these creators or the work they produce. While the agency collects 20% of the profits from each project, Pereira insisted he did not create this network for the sole purpose of reaping the rewards but to instead solve an industry problem. The way he sees it, marketers are increasingly placing their budgets behind "micro" content, which is what Briefly is designed to handle, and the top tier, which is cinematic branded entertainment, where he wants Pereira O'Dell to focus. Pereira said he sees brands requesting less national broadcast campaigns that cost about $300,000 to make and more $3 million branded films, like the Adobe Creative Cloud spot the agency recently partnered with Zach Braff to create. "We’ve structured this entire industry around these six-digit productions when things are moving up and down and very little is [in the middle]," Pereira said. "I don't want to be one of the thousands of agencies fighting for these smaller- or middle-budget campaigns. Briefly allows us to free up more energy and creative power to do the stuff on the top, which is way more fun. Things like the Adobe work wouldn't have been possible if everyone was running around like headless chickens looking to do a $1,000 production for Rover."