Joseph Jaffe Launches New Agency, “Evol8tion”...

Innovation agency looks to fuse worlds of Madison Avenue and Mountain View to “reverse engineer” the startup

 

Thought Leader, Author and Entrepreneur Joseph Jaffe, today announced the launch of his new company, Evol8tion, LLC

 

Evol8tion is an innovation agency that matches early stage startups to blue chip brands to partner via mentoring, pilot programs and/or investment. Evol8tion aims to change the way brands work with technology-based startups via early stage participation with early stage ventures.

 

Evol8tion is Jaffe’s latest breakthrough for the marketing world, following his firm, crayon, one of the industry’s first social media agencies, which was acquired by Powered, and again by Dachis Group. Before that, Jaffe was Director of Interactive Media at TBWA/Chiat/Day and OMD USA. He is also a three time author of best selling books, hosts a blog and audio podcast, "Jaffe Juice,” and a video show called Jaffe Juice TV.

 

“The startup lives in the epicenter of technology-inspired innovation,” said Jaffe. “But brands are often not brought into the picture until the startup is so far downstream in the process that it’s too late to influence direction, partner or truly innovate.”

 

“Startups are dominated by technology and finance, but instead of ending on Madison Avenue’s doorstep, what if we began with the business problem, brand truth, and consumer insight, and worked backward into development and funding?” added Jaffe. “We believe that by collaborating upstream, significant learnings, growth and accelerated pathways to success will be inevitably realized.”

 

With its first branded product called “MatchMaker,” Evol8tion will represent viable startups and help them find their “brand soul mate.” Using a proprietary database of categorized early stage startups, Evol8tion will make introductions to its client base of brands and present a suite of participation opportunities, including - but not limited to – mentoring, pilot programs and even investment. On board already are two blue chip companies that will serve as launch partners, Kraft Foods and Anheuser-Busch InBev.

 

“Innovation is no longer a nice to have for brands, it's now become imperative to stimulate a deeper and more meaningful connection with consumers,” said Ed Kaczmarek, Director of Innovation, Consumer Experiences at Kraft Foods. “We’ve been doing just that with initiatives like our iFood Assistant and Big Fork Little Fork apps, as well as our partnerships with Intel and Shopkick. Through our collaboration with Evol8tion, we are looking to accelerate our innovation pipeline even further.”

 

“Innovation has been long thought of as a function of product development, packaging and distribution,” says Maarten Albarda, Vice President of Global Connections at ABInBev. “We are excited to demonstrate that innovation can and should include marketing itself in its wheelhouse.”

 

“This is – simply put – an efficiency and effectiveness 1-2 punch,” explained Jaffe. “Move from being media dependent to media discerning with significantly less waste, whilst simultaneously attempting to build the “better mousetrap.”

 

The bridge between Madison Avenue and Mountain View is literally represented by a thought leadership portal and community hub of the same name (http://www.madisonandmountainview.com), which will contain interviews, profiles, guest posts, research and much more focusing on the fusion between advertising and technology. Madisonandmountainview.com also launches today as an independent and standalone platform.

 

Interested brands, startups and partners can visit http://www.startupsforbrands.com to find out more, read the manifesto and view the vision videos (also available on http://www.youtube.com/mplusmv)