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Instead of conjuring up ideas for brands, Nothing have gone one step beyond – creating the brands themselves. Isobel Roberts reports from the frontline

The brains behind Nothing are no strangers to jumping in at the deep end.

Michael Jansen and Bas Korsten first met at DDB in 1998, then five years ago ditched the network rat race to help found independent agency Selmore. But after more than three successful years there, last January the duo decided to reinvent themselves – and the advertising business model – once again.

The pair’s new venture offers up something different. Even in today’s brave new world of ever-changing creative hybrids, Nothing is a different kettle of fish. On the one hand the small team functions as a communications agency for advertising clients, while on the other, under the title Nothing Ventured, they operate in the business of ‘commercial creativity’ – in essence, creating new brands and products from scratch.

“We found at Selmore that it was harder and harder for ad agencies with the remuneration model that they have to get the value for their ideas,” explains creative partner Korsten. “There’s high competition on hourly rates and budgets being squeezed. So with Nothing we didn’t want to wait by the phone for advertisers to call and say you can have the job but only if you do it as cheap as those guys. We wanted to create our own brands and products to get out of that dependency. And if you’ve got a good idea, approaching clients with it can give you a bit more power.”

Emboldened by the entrepreneurial spirit, Korsten and Jansen have taken their branding expertise to the next level by playing the role of brand creators. Their first project out of the starting blocks was the invention of an entirely new sport. The duo took inspiration from Korsten’s ex-Premiership footballer brother, who would play a game with his teammates to get the football from the training ground to the locker room in as few kicks as possible. They added a dash of creative sparkle, and FootGolf was born – a combination of football and golf played on the golf course.

To set the idea in motion, the pair organised a high-profile FootGolf event, generated large amounts of PR, and spread the word. Plus, behind the scenes they’d put in place the infrastructure to make FootGolf a credible sport by inventing a set of rules, a clothing line, special cups, and even founding the International FootGolf Association.

“It’s a very doable sport anyone can play,” says Jansen. “We thought we’d come up with an idea, develop it to a certain stage and then hand it over to a developer or someone commercially responsible, and then come up with a new concept. We have learnt now, especially with FootGolf, that it’s so dependent on its look and feel that when rolling it out you need to sit tight on it. But we’ve got a sports marketing agency involved now, too. Perhaps we might even get an ad agency,” he jokes.

Another project in the pipeline, in collaboration with modern hotel chain citizenM, is a simple, real-time customer survey rating. Even Nothing’s completely cardboard office has one – as you walk out the door, you can rate your experience out of 10. In operation at citizenM’s hotels, it gives staff a real indication of how they’re doing.

But while brainstorming new ventures is part of their remit, Nothing is still dedicated to the cause of crafting creative solutions for clients. Strong believers in transforming consumers into brand advocates, they’re keen to think outside the traditional advertising box. “We’re not an ad agency, not a product design agency, not an events agency,” elaborates Jansen.

“What we’d like to do is come up with an idea for a client where we see an opportunity or problem, and that might not be a traditional communication campaign – but then again it might be. That’s partly where our name comes from: we are nothing to begin with because we don’t know what the problem is yet, but we become something as we work on the job.

We see ideas as the big unifier, and we don’t want to do just ideas based on traditional communication.”

And as well as shifting their creative method, Nothing are also turning the way ideas are valued on its head. Sign up with Nothing, and you won’t be billed with any hourly rates. Instead, costings are calculated on how much a particular idea is worth. A novel approach, and Korsten is ready to admit the challenge in placing a monetary value on ideas, but feels that Nothing’s forward-thinking attitude is the direction advertising needs to head.

“I believe that everybody thinks this is the way things are going, but it’s such a different way that I don’t think the traditional agencies can easily adapt to it,” finishes Korsten. “But it’s easy for a creative who has worked for brands to come up with ideas that can become brands themselves. I think that’s logical.”

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