What does a Maker actually make?
About Maker Studio’s most important resource, with Patricia and Bogdan.
Patricia: Haters gonna hate, Makers gonna make. I particularly like this phrase for the simple fact that it expresses in the most serious way what a Maker does at Maker Studio.
To start from the beginning, the Makers are a collective of young people from GenZ, creative and full of good ideas that can’t wait to be implemented. There are many young creatives in Romania who could come up with valuable ideas in this wonderful field we call Advertising.
As we’ve previously reported, Maker Studio creates snackable video content campaigns with these young people full of creative ideas.
Bogdan: Our business model is decentralized and focuses on roles, not structures. And that’s unique in this industry at the moment: Maker Studio doesn’t use the traditional processes and roles in an agency, it has no Art, Copy, Creative Director at all. Instead, it has a collective of over 100 young people. They are our creatives and strategists, generating ideas, insights, trends for agency campaigns. It’s a working process based exclusively on co-creation, agile and efficient. We call our young creatives: Makers.
Why you should work with a Maker
Patricia: Why is it really cool to be a Maker? You get a lot of benefits that don’t restrict you in any way. The sky’s the limit and where you choose to work is strictly your decision, I mean you guessed it right – you don’t go to the office. Now, I’m not talking about remote hours where you commute one day a week to the office, no. You don’t go at all. You work from anywhere, anytime. Pretty cool, huh?
What does a Maker do?
The story starts with a brief. Our Makers get it from the client, of course shaped by people with agency vision to make it as understandable as possible. Then they have to come up with as many short video content ideas as possible on the brief. It’s as easy as it sounds, yes.
I think the advantage is that we, young people, live and breathe Social Media anyway. We know what’s trending on TikTok. We can tell immediately what’s catching on and we have the ability to model a specific trend or sound on the brief we get. Intuition didn’t deceive us and it really happened. We’ve already run the first campaigns by Maker Studio: Philadelphia Pancakes and Oreo Pizza.
Philadelphia Pancakes & Andreea Corb
@andreeacorb Eu și Philly suntem prieteni buni, așa că astăzi m-a ajutat să fac cel mai bun tort de clătite pentru ziua de naștere a prietenei mele. 🤍💙 #philadelphia #philly #amunprieteninPhilly
♬ sunet original – andreeacorb
Oreo Pizza & Sorana Maria
@soranamaria26 In calitate de Snackolog am facut aceasta Pizza cu Oreo, care are sansa de a castiga noul titlu de snack oficial in campania „Gustare de TOP”. 🤓 Dar inainte de asta trebuie sa ma ajutati sa ne unim fortele si sa il invingem pe @Antonio Luca la battle-ul de Pizza cu Oreo, așa ca hai cu un like, share sau comment! 🤍👸🏼 Sunt sigura ca impreuna cu voi putem sa aratam lumii ce delicioasa e combinatia aceasta nebuna si fresh, perfecta de impartit cu prietenii (chiar si cu cei mai pretentiosi).✨ #OreoRomania #PizzaCuOreo #GustareDeTop #Snackologie
♬ Cooking Class – FASSounds
Oreo Pizza & Antonio Luca
@antonio.luca Pentru o serată savuroasă alături de prieteni, pizza cu Oreo nu dă greș niciodată! Dar…oare care e mai bună?! @Sorana Maria În calitate de Snackolog, intru în acest battle și vă invit să facem această pizza să fie snack oficial în noua campanie „Gustare de TOP”! Like, share, comment și tot ce se poate. :)) #OreoRomania #PizzaCuOreo #GustareDeTop #Snackologie
♬ sunet original – Antonio Luca
Bogdan: What’s cool about the projects Patricia describes is that they both benefited from the Maker model in two distinct ways. First, the two brands received campaign ideas directly from their target consumers, without any filter or agency bias. The ideas also had added value from the perspective that our Makers incorporate personal experiences into their proposals. Secondarily, although the proposals reached clients later compared to the usual workflow in Advertising, they received a communication solution validated by the multiple evaluation components of the Maker process. This includes: evaluators, curators, content consultants and biometric testing. In both instances, proposals were approved with minimal feedback from clients.
Patricia: So, basically, what does a Maker do? He makes sure he has a comfortable place to work from. Then he reads the brief carefully and starts coming up with ideas for short video content. He has to be reassured that there are no bad ideas, because they will be filtered by a team of curators afterwards. They are people with agency expertise who will choose the best ideas. Yes, Makers are paid per idea. Yes, the winning idea also gets a bonus.
As a Maker you have total freedom in the process.
Patricia: How cool it is to work from wherever you want, whenever you want, whatever time you want. And your job to mean searching for sounds on TikTok that fit the concept and adapting trends to the brief? A D O R E.
Let’s go back to the opening sentence. Haters gonna hate – yeah, you’re gonna hear people say, ” Eh, that’s it? No way”, Makers gonna make – and they get paid. Basically, put the old way, as Makers you see dogs walking around with bagels in their tails.
Bogdan: What’s even cooler about our Makers is that they are all GenZ, so part of a generation-paradox (that’s how I see it, from a millennialist perspective). It has this duality of connected disconnect. On the one hand, it grew up in the rather difficult period of the last 3-4 years, and the prolonged isolation of the pandemic made them perceive relationships and connections in a completely different way than previous generations.
TikTok and other platforms have helped them create and express themselves, content is their language. In other words, they are the first generation to fully democratise video creation and production, two processes previously considered elitist. What’s more, they don’t have the biases of the communication industry. They come with a natural understanding of what is authentic and representative of their generation. This is an important differentiator for us in an industry context where many brand campaigns are perceived by younger consumers as inauthentic. At Maker Studio, we encourage their unfiltered, authentic and somewhat creative perspective.
