Who would have thought that understanding prose would be the most persuasive way to get technology to work for us? It seems now more than ever, creativity is becoming a duet of intelligence, where one side decides what’s ‘good’ and the other side tries to get to good much faster than the other side ever could. Springboards.ai – co-founded by a couple, both ex-strategists who learnt the language of code – are now helping agencies get closer to AI. Here, Pip Bingemann talks us through their journey and process in creating Springboards.  

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First, please introduce yourselves and tell us what Springboards AI is and does. 

So I’m Pip.

My wife (Amy Tucker) and I have been in the advertising industry for the last 15 years.

We both started (and met) in media agencies in Sydney, jumped to creative shops in San Francisco, tried our luck on the client side and ended up in a sweet little beach town called Noosa back in Australia and got laid off!

Resisting the urge to move back to a big city, we started what we called an ‘experimentation’ studio, which was just a fancy word for freelancers who played around when we had no work.

Anyway, one of those experiments became known as ‘Springboards’, which then turned into a suite of AI tools designed to accelerate human creativity and the traditional agency process.

It's hard to describe how it works and what it does in words, but at a high level, it's a milkshake of AI tools at every stage of the agency process to allow you to go from insights -> ideas -> concept art in minutes. Not designed as final work but as a springboard to get to great work faster. You kind of have to see it. It's pretty wild! 

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People have said the product will produce a "new way of working." What is this new way?

I can't speak for all AI ‘new ways of working’, but what I can do is speak to Springboards. Our goal for Springboards is to keep people in control but provide them with the tonnage to explore and get to work better and faster. 

At a high level, it's a suite of AI-based tools that can assist at most stages of the creative process, from brand strategy to insights, brand ideas, and manifestos all the way through to executions.

Springboards is best used in a pitch scenario, but everyone uses it differently. Some jump in for insights, others executional ideas and some just to get up to speed on the brand quickly.

In our biased POV, it's a better, faster, but most importantly, more enjoyable way to work.

Three reasons for this:‍

1. It FORCES you to get out of your head and open up to new thinking and ways of working

2. It ALLOWS strategists to stretch into creative work and creatives to play with insights and strategic work. It breaks down traditional work silos but respects them at the same time.

3. It REMOVES distractions and the focus on technology. Instead of worrying about how the tech works, mastering prompting, etc., we just ask people to focus on what the right problem to go after is, what's an interesting insight, and what great work looks like. We give you the tonnage to get to better work faster. 

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Please tell us more about the inception story. How did you come up with the idea? 

Ha, as alluded to above, it was an experiment.

We were lucky that we had no jobs when AI was just coming into the spotlight and that we lived in Noosa, which, despite its size, has a thriving little startup community centred around the ‘Peregian digital hub.’

So we played. We made up fictitious brands, created art collections, brand strategies, brand books, manifestos and just leant into the weird stuff AI could get you to. It was dumb stuff, really.

This play led to running workshops, and we started hitting walls with what was available then, so we started learning how to code (badly). We ended up building the prototype, showing people and the more people we showed, the more we got asked to take money for it, which we promptly said no to because we were embarrassed by it.

But as more people asked it did make us think about running after it and doing it properly. So we moved in with Amy’s parents, took our severance pay and savings, hired amazing developers and hoped that once we had something we were willing to take money for people would actually pay us!

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How have you got people using it? 

Quite simply, it was through our network. We’ve been lucky enough to work with really great people in our careers, and those great people have ended up in senior strategy, creative and management roles.

We showed people, their heads kind of exploded, they signed up and talked about it. 

I’d like to pretend it was planned, but it wasn't. Funnily enough, we were working on a ‘Go to market’ plan with eyes only on the Australian market, but after showing Zoe Scaman she tweeted this, people tracked us down and we woke up to emails from around the world.

Since then, we've been keeping our head above water.

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You both worked in tech; what did this teach you about the intersection between technology and creativity? 

Ahh, not much, if I'm honest. I think it taught us what not to do and what we don't want to be versus inspiring a new way of thinking. We worked in ‘big’ tech and ‘small’ tech, but I don't think either of us enjoyed it all that much.

Maybe it was the roles, the corporate nature of it, or just getting detached from the work, but everything we learned about creativity was within agencies.

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Should more strategists learn the language of code? 

Ohh yeah! Learning to code opened my eyes to what creativity can mean. 

Before learning, I thought ‘devs’ and ‘coding’ was a technical skill but I quickly realised it is anything but. 

Coding is problem-solving. Problem-solving is creativity.

Even if you don't learn all that much and it's just surface level, it will open your eyes to new solutions you previously couldn't think of.

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With prompts now more important than ever, has language become more important? 

Hmmm..

I'd like to say yes, but language has always been of the utmost importance. It's just sometimes we forget when dealing with humans because they understand nuance and can interpret meaning more naturally.

Working with creatives, it always astounded me how they jumped on to one sentence or a few words in a brief; AI is kinda the same but amplified. 

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Now you have left the agency world, what do you miss? 

The work. The beers. The banter, and I hate to admit it….the pitching. 

For me, pitching was a game. It was both tactical and strategic, brains and creativity, adrenaline and emotion. 

At the same time, I LOVE what I'm doing now; I mean I get to talk about creativity every day. I get all the fun parts from playing with springboards and demoing it to people I respect and admire.

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Will AI ever replace people entirely? 

No.

For two reasons:
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1. Self-preservation. 
If AI can replace creatives, it can sure as hell replace accountants, lawyers etc. 
So the ultimate decision-makers will be acting in their interests. If they make decisions for  AI to replace people, I think they will see the writing on the wall for themselves.

2. Humans are REALLY good at working Monday to Friday, 9-5. When the computer came along, we didn't take off Friday or stop employing more people; when the internet came along, we didn't take off Thursday. We will still do the same work but our outputs will increase.

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We discussed AI and younger talent entering the industry; what are your worries? 

This is my biggest concern.
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When you buy into a remote or even hybrid work life you take away all those micro moments of learning through chatting and osmosis.

When you add AI into the mix, it makes it WAY easier to be lazy - humans love being lazy.

These two forces create a dangerous recipe for shit talent and shit work in as little as 10 years. If the talent sucks and the work suffers, the industry loses credibility and accelerates in-housing which then creates a vacuum of training (which is what agency life does so well!), amplifying the problem and spiralling out of control. We need to be aware of this and act on it NOW.

Training and Development will be MORE important than ever because you need to learn to THINK and understand what makes good work, and I think that only comes with time, reading, learning and figuring it out. 

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What are your plans for Springboards in 2024 and beyond? 

Lots! This thing is only getting started, and our dev team is pumping out updates monthly. There are some super interesting things in the works but will keep it tight-lipped for now.

‍About Ayo:
Ayo Fagbemi, strategy + copy director at Explorers Club, a design and strategy studio - has had a rap battle with Raheem Sterling at Wieden + Kennedy, been exhibited, written for and slept in the Design Museum, and faked David Lammy’s signature in Parliament.

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