The Never-Ending Brief/Every Damn Day

What happens when you have to solve the same brief every day? @Beyobeee happens. We’re two creatives at Deutsch that gave ourselves a daily challenge to test our creativity outside of brand work and to embrace a moment of play each day. And, so far, our brains are thanking us for it. 

So, what is @Beyobeee? A fan page dedicated to Queen Bey? A soft cheese?

Nope. In addition to our team name (yes, we sign emails off with it), @Beyobeee (Becca + Hyobee) is our joint Instagram account filled with daily partner selfies. The rules? We can never repeat a concept, we must always embrace the grimacing Beyobeee face, and we better have fun, gosh darn it.

Sounds easy, right? Maybe for a week or two. But over time, costume changes, taped faces and handstands would indicate otherwise. What started as a goofy picture each day became a creative challenge to reinvent the same image in interesting, unexpected ways. And though there are certainly days that we curse ourselves for starting the account, the difficulty in doing this every day is what has led us to some of our favourite posts.

In a way, @Beyobeee gives us structure. The account doesn’t let us slack off. As partners, we hold each other responsible for a daily post. And because we’re posting consistently, we can see the outcome of our work regularly. Even if that outcome is two grown women crouching awkwardly in a small bush with contorted faces.

A daily challenge like @Beyobeee is a series of small-term goals, but they ladder up to a bigger one. Posting a pic at the end of a workday is really about giving our minds a five-minute workout. And with a low-risk environment like social media, we have the flexibility to make mistakes as we work toward the bigger goal of beefed-up brains. With @Beyobeee we’re free from the guardrails of brand work, and this forces us to be critical of ourselves. We want each post to be better than the last, which should, according to our very detailed calculations, lead to more interesting content. We made the account public so that others can hold us accountable for posting every day, but it’s more about experimenting and pushing ourselves in a space that’s consequence-free.

This one-upping mentality plays out every day at Beyobeee o’clock. We look around the office and blurt out four or five humdrum ideas. Then we’re quiet for a moment until something better hits us. Usually the tell that we’re onto something interesting is that we’re laughing maniacally.

We’re big believers in the importance of play. It’s why we have matching adult hopper balls that we use for inter-meeting transportation, and why we’ve shown up to work on more than one occasion in costume. We’re creatives and we want to stay creative, which means pausing every now and then to play - and @Beyobeee is the perfect outlet for that.

So, we encourage you to find your own daily challenge, whatever it may be - something you can enjoy. Something that, no matter how outrageous it may be, pushes you every single day.

Becca Antonucci is Creative Copywriter and Hyobee Kim is Creative Art Director at Deutsch