The Sunday Times Best Places to Live

OPEN CULTURE, LONG IDEAS

OPEN

We have pioneered a different culture and way of working at Grey.

We call it OPEN.

Open provides:

Direct access to creatives and planners. No barriers to entry.

Smart, fast, agile and versatile solutions. No executive sign-offs, no production lines.

No ego. We reject the old notion that ideas have to be bottle-necked through a 'godlike' single creative director. Multi-discipline teams solve business problems together. The client is at the heart, central to the work.

Media agnostic solutions. No obsession with TV. We find the right channel solution.

No physical departmental structures, allowing multi-discipline teams to cluster around the task in hand rather than rigidly sticking within their department boundaries.

Using this approach means that we can be more fluid and faster to create teams for small or tactical projects as well as getting the widest possible talent set together for a major long term challenge.

We work in a way that leads to better, more original ideas, which sees us win online or in the more traditional offline environments.

We develop solutions with real social currency, ideas that are famously effective and ideas that deliver real success on our clients' bottom line.

LONG

Most agencies talk about Big Ideas.

We believe in Long Ideas.

Big Ideas come and go. By comparison, Long Ideas start earlier and live longer.

Long Ideas travel further across media, companies, people and culture. They are ideas that are entertaining, interesting or useful enough to get shared. They are ideas which involve people, give people something to talk about or do and the means to do it. Long ideas are inspired by 'Tinder'.

Tinder sparks the imagination. Starts conversations. Creates social currency. Magnifies and multiplies through word-of-mouth, PR and social media. Tinder sparks discussion and ultimately fuels behaviour change.

Tinder can be a promotion (RyanAir flights for £1,The Lottery), an event (The X Factor), a feature (iPhone app), a first (sending a chair to the edge of space – our Toshiba SpaceChair project) or a celebrity (Vinnie Jones, British Heart Foundation).

Long Ideas are not ideas that happen to engage consumers in multiple ways – they are ideas that are designed that way. They start with a different question and demand an agency with a different set of skills.

We are now the first major London agency where the mix of traditional and new media skills is a 50:50 split.