Of value creation and collaboration in the creative industry. This paper assumes understanding of creative agency operations. If you’d like a tldr, try Client Agency Partnerships: Preview

The Lab is a full-service creative studio in branding, spatial design, and communication. But we like to think we’re a creative investment team.

Clients come to us to conceptualize, collaborate, kickstart, or accelerate a creative project. We invest our time, talent, and reputation (and sometimes money) into the right projects.

Any project we pursue is an investment decision of where to allocate limited resources to maximize returns. Most agencies allocate resources to projects in return for a fee, then search for new projects. We optimize for creative partnerships and grow those**.**

Of course, this isn’t totally new. Creative agencies have tried to tie part of their compensation with project performance before. Others have created business units to augment their creative services with clients, like TBWA’s Here Be Dragons, an innovation studio, or W+K Tokyo Labs, a music label.

But their core business remained (hugely profitable). And they’re much much bigger than us. So in the world of independent creative studios, we think this model works for us.

There are, of course, also risks and bottlenecks, but the upside for us is mutually aligned interests, creative freedom, and value sharing.

Creative partnerships. Sounds nice. What does it mean in practice?

• It means we don’t pitch.
• We share the risk with new clients by refunding 50% of their deposits if we can’t get pass 2-3 rounds of feedback together.
• We don’t pursue every inbound project. We engage projects that are a creative challenge and a financial opportunity to grow the relationship into a long-term partnership.
• We build our own creative projects, then reach out to clients for investments.
  • Examples: we created a concept for H.A.N., one of the biggest nightlife companies in Vietnam, and they funded it with a 6-figure budget. Or a private club with Vietcetera, a media company, which we also co-founded years ago. Or a non-profit platform to redesign library spaces across rural Vietnam, then we pitch it to NGOs.
• We research a client’s business, teams and operations, and set 5 - 10 year project horizons.
• We build our creative reputation so that client projects get a boost from our work.
  • Example: we curate exhibitions for De La Sol, a cultural hub that we created with our client Sun Life.