AMSTERDAM: WE ARE Pi

They left giants W+K to start on their own and named their new company on a whim. But the seemingly madcap creatives of WE ARE Pi are just as dedicated to the passionate search for infinite perfection as their moniker suggests.

It wouldn’t take a maths genius to figure out the risks in leaving comfortable, senior positions at Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam to start your own shop in a city where you can throw a bitterbal in any direction and hit a powerful creative agency that you’ll have to compete with.

That’s what Alex Bennett Grant (MD), Rick Chant, Barney Hobson (both ECDs) and Jamie Nami Kim (production director) did in 2011 when they founded WE ARE Pi on March 14 – Pi day. “It was terrifying,” admits Hobson. “When you take a big risk like that you don’t want to regret it six months later.”

They took the leap with founding clients LEGO and TEDx Amsterdam and it’s those brands with whom the agency has “found its voice” says Chant. WE ARE Pi handled the entire branding for the launch of TEDx Amsterdam two years ago, centred around an opening performance by dancers – some students and some from the Dutch National Ballet – who assembled themselves into the form of a giant human brain. A making-of film became an ad in itself and during the event an interactive ‘living’ online brain acted as a documentary of the day, collating social media comments and swelling or reducing in size in real time depending on how many people tweeted about the presentations as they were in progress.

“TED was a tech brand. We wanted to shift that into a more cultural brand. To do that we looked at TED and saw that it’s not about tech, it’s about people; people on stage talking about their ideas and people in the audience sharing them,” explains Chant, who points out how TED, “want stuff that’s as fascinating in the process as it is in the output. Some of the jobs we’ve done for them have become TED talks themselves – how we did them.”

Following the success of the Amsterdam event’s branding, WE ARE Pi was handed the reins for TEDGlobal and TEDxSummit in Qatar. For the latter they built the world’s biggest kaleidoscope (18 metres high) to create a moving human pattern. The resulting video made news programmes around the world and the agency has been invited to present an act on TV show Britain’s Got Talent using the ’scope, which the ECDs are working to place in a gallery or museum.

The poster of the aforementioned ‘human brain’, photographed by Bill Tanaka, has also been much coveted and a limited edition run of prints was temporarily put up for sale by the Saatchi gallery, but had to be withdrawn due to ownership issues. “There’s an eternal question of whether there is ever a crossover between art and advertising, so it’s nice that these things can be appreciated as works of art,” says a smiling Hobson.

We do it because we can

WE ARE Pi’s six members of staff hail from Britain, Canada and Switzerland, but although they don’t have any locals on board currently, the ECDs say they’re not trying to build an international-only agency. “We just want to do the most interesting projects,” says Chant.

One local client they have done some impressive work for is Deloitte Netherlands, launching its digital presence. “They asked us to build them a website but we said, ‘You can’t just have a website, you need to become a digital company’,” explains Chant. The agency created the world’s first ‘data-driven derby’ – a way for attendees at Emerce eDay (Europe’s biggest e-business conference) to bet via Twitter on ‘racing’ industry facts. It was a way to engage new customers and Deloitte took it on the road around Europe, smashing annual sales targets in three months.

While Chant admits the agency’s name was decided on a whim – “It was Pi day and we like pies” – he also believes it is fitting. “Pi relates to an infinite search for the answer and we always reserve the right to keep on looking. If we’ve presented work to a client and they buy into it and we then discover something else, we hope that they’re as open to exploration as we are.”

This approach can be seen in their LEGO work. Having originally helped the brand create actual characters, stories and product worlds, including CHIMA and NINJAGO, WE ARE Pi has since taken on ad duties too, which led to LEGO’s first UK brand ad for 30 years, Let’s Build!, shot by Joanna Bailey. “We said they should reconnect with parents because the worlds of the products are alienating to them,” explains Chant. “So we helped create the problem in the first place!”

The spot reminds parents what LEGO is all about – using your imagination to build – and it proudly displays the soul that’s in all their work. But what are their plans for the future? “We’re focussing on fun really – making sure we’re doing good work and that’s not always necessarily advertising. We’re talking to the UN at the moment about a project, we do a continuing touring exhibition called Imagining Mozambique [a charity initiative] and we do things like books, just because we can,” says Chant.

“We love what we’ve achieved in the last two years. It’s been an amazing journey so far and we’ve produced the best work of our lives,” adds Hobson, who thinks the agency will grow when the time is right. “We’re still looking for the client that is going to grow with us and we can develop with.”

“WE ARE Pi’s got a really strong brand now through the work. I think its reputation is bigger than we are,” surmises Chant.

And it doesn’t take a maths genius to figure out that he’s right.