CO: Collective

Ty Montague was one of the first top-level creatives to trade in his high-profile network job for the small start-up life when he departed JWT New York in March last year, along with the agency’s co-president Rosemarie Ryan.

That solution has emerged in the form of Co: Collective, the pair’s new venture, launched in partnership with Neil Parker and Richard Schatzberger. Billed as a brand innovation studio, the concept behind the company revolves around collaboration. With the core team’s speciality lying in brand, business and creative strategy, they then collaborate with freelancers or outside companies, partners they call ‘co-conspirators’, to execute and bring to life those strategies.

“We are truly agnostic about whatever the solution is,” elaborates Montague, “and we call the company a story-led innovation collective. Story-led because story is incredibly important to human beings and will continue to be so – technology is changing, but humans aren’t, so helping brands and clients understand their story is fundamental to our model. Innovation because we believe taking innovative action is a much better way of making your story real for people. Sometimes that might be communication, but many times we believe a more effective action might be to create a new product or piece of software or new service, and then think about communicating back.”

Most of Co: Collective’s projects are still in the making, but the company’s strategy work with men’s cable channel Spike revealed new possibilities for brand development and they are now working on creating entertainment properties that enhance Spike’s story. Co-conspirators across the collective’s projects range from digital shop Big Spaceship to social tech company Made by Many to creative network Behance – but most essential to the process at Co: Collective is getting to the heart of the client’s business and objectives, and being involved as early as possible. “Not every client is in a position to innovate these days and we’re certainly not a solution for everybody,” Montague comments, “but for ones that want to do something in a new way and really believe in the power of innovation to transform business, they will find a happy home here at Co: Collective.”

And while several small shops were caught in the jaws of the recent recession, Montague is positive about the new green shoots popping up across the industry. “There tends to be a fair bit of innovation that takes place on the back-end of recessions,” he enthuses. “It’s the cycle of renewal and keeps our business exciting, so we keep in touch with a lot of people from those shops and we’d love to work with a lot of them. From our perspective in the start-up space, the more the merrier.”

Learn more here.