Death of the Template: How ReMake Is Solving the Real Problem With Creative Automation

Many creative automation products and services promise ‘super fast scaling’ through sophisticated and flexible platforms. This is a particularly appealing prospect for bleary-eyed designers who are slowly but surely incurring repetitive strain injuries from the more monotonous aspects of the versioning process. However, despite the initial allure of automated solutions, it doesn’t take long for users to discover that most of these platforms often require all new templates which come at an additional cost. This means, in order to maximise the full capabilities of these platforms, the creative must be adapted to fit the bespoke templates – an unexpected and finicky hurdle for any time-pushed designer. 

Enter ReMake - the versioning and localisation experts with the highly sought-after solution to end this creative contradiction. Offering users a more cost-effective, ready-to-go solution, ReMake’s user interface solves the ‘template’ problem of its competitors by allowing users to upload their original creative to the platform.The result? A streamlined process that enables teams to move faster, while maintaining full control of the creative.  

LBB’s April Summers speaks to entrepreneur and ReMake founder, Daniel Robey, to talk about how their revolutionary approach to automation puts an end to compromising on creativity.

LBB> How is ReMake changing the shape of creative automation to enable teams to work in harmony with new tech?

Daniel> ReMake is not trying to be all things to all people. There’s a lot of tools out there claiming to be and do everything – not us. There’s already really good analytics tools, good DAMs, really good ad-serving tools, amazing creative tech – we’re not here to compete with those. We identified a problem that was not being addressed properly - versioning and localisation - a traditionally slow, laborious and expensive process. That’s the problem we’ve decided to solve, and ReMake does it really f**king well. 

But to do that, it’s essential that our platform works in harmony with all those other tools, plugging seamlessly into any tech stack and workflow. That’s what creative automation is about, isn’t it? Accelerating processes seamlessly, accurately and more cost efficiently. Which is what led us to address the biggest problem with creative automation – the subject of templates and why we won’t ever use them.

LBB> When and how was the issue of ‘templates’ first brought to your attention?

Daniel> It goes back to Think Jam (our sister company and award-winning entertainment agency founded in 2004). We realised you can’t easily template film campaigns. The assets are so unique and bespoke; from the fonts, animation, title sequences, action and all the interstitials that come with an ad. We looked at tools to help us and found that everything was so restrictive. We couldn’t adopt templates based on the kind of work we were doing.

LBB> Why is it important for you to ensure ReMake is a template-free model? 

Daniel> To really scale and power versioning and localisation at speed, in a cost-effective manner; to deliver on all the promises of creative automation - fast, smooth, seamless, agile - a platform needs to be flexible and needs to work with your project files. 

Paying for an Adobe subscription - the industry standard software - creating your assets, and then having to pay again while you wait for your creative to be re-templated makes no sense. It’s slowing the process down and making it a hell of a lot more expensive.

Templates make the process clunky. They can’t always deliver what your creative does, either, which means you’re compromising on creativity before you’ve even got to versioning. ReMake is designed to give you the means to scale and version - at speed - without having to sacrifice creativity. 

LBB> Can you walk us through how the upload and edit process is easier for ReMake users? 

Daniel> Honestly, it couldn’t be more simple. You ready your files, in line with three-simple steps found in our ReMake ready document, drag them into the system, make a coffee and you’re ready to version. Removing the element of templates means you can be updating your creative in minutes, that’s how quick the QA process is.

LBB> The process certainly sounds super intuitive and efficient! What feedback have you received from clients?

Daniel> What we’re hearing repeatedly from clients and prospective clients is that ReMake is solving a problem that has needed to be solved for ages. For many, the biggest hurdle that they’ve experienced with other platforms is the lead time to get started with versioning. Of course, so much time goes into creating templates which, for many, limits the projects they can offer cost-effective versioning for. The use of technology and software to streamline and automate repetitive tasks involved in the creative process should be seamless, agile and fluid, but “the template problem” is a blocker. Our template-less model has proven pivotal and is a major part of the reason why we’ve been able to retain, win and keep winning work. 

We’re so often told by designers that it's soul destroying to see their creative watered down to fit the constraints of templating solutions and ultimately end up looking the same as every other templated ad. We’re not in the business of pissing creatives off. 

LBB> How has the platform been designed to enable teams and accelerate workflows? 

Daniel> Brutal simplicity is at the core of everything we do at ReMake. From UX, onboarding and integration, we’re committed to making sure all processes and experiences are seamless. Creative automation only makes sense when it is easy to use. However, despite being simple, it has to deliver, and behind ReMake’s simplicity is a robust platform.

LBB> In what other ways does ReMake influence the shape and dynamic of teams? 

Daniel> ReMake substantially reduces the time required for versioning tasks. In fact, it’s up to 30x faster: 1,000 assets can be versioned and rendered in an hour. It has had a huge impact on the teams using it; most notably by dramatically freeing up the capacity of designers who had previously spent a large portion of their time manually versioning and localising content. With ReMake, they can focus more time on what they do best - being creative - without the worry that they’re going to have to bend and break their creations to fit a template. 

LBB> Looking to the future, how does ReMake plan to continue pushing creative automation forward?

Daniel> There’s no question that AI is a hot topic but we’re not simply jumping on the bandwagon because it’s trendy. It’s been a part of our journey from the very beginning, and is already powering parts of our platform. We have an unbelievably exciting and ambitious AI road map that puts us at the very forefront of creative automation, and we will continue to deliver on our mantra of being the best and most simple-to-use versioning and localisation platform on the planet. Watch this space.