The day DDB’s Chris Brown, lost his Superman status. And how Tribal Worldwide Australia won it back for him.

By Candide McDonald and Darwin Tomlinson, ECD Tribal Worldwide Sydney.

[Candide gets to go first…]

When Chris Brown is not racing up the corporate ladder (he was appointed CEO and president of DDB New York in June) he is Dad to a six year old, or as his six year old sees him, Superman.

   Chris Brown

Chris does Dad things on Saturdays, like surfing with his son. That usually goes pretty well. But one Saturday, Chris’ car keys – imprisoned securely, so Chris thought, in a plastic bag – escaped in the surf and swam to New Zealand.

Chris tried not to get into a bit of a tizz, because son expected he knew the answer to everything. But then son threw a ball of kryptonite at him: “Call Mum.”

And that was how Chris Brown lost his Superman status.

[This is where Darwin comes in…]

“In our aim to develop innovative experiences that add value to people’s lives, we’re always observing our world and questioning how we can make things better.

“We observed that Chris had a problem – where to put his electronic car keys when he goes surfing. We questioned the Tribal and the DDB teams. And that was how we found out that the most common solution is to “hide” keys atop a tire, which obviously isn’t ideal. We ran a workshop to develop new solutions for the problem and came up with a host of possible ideas.

The Tribal rescue team:

l-r: Phil Dowgierd, Rich Lloyd, Darwin Tomlinson

Jeff Cheong

Matt Oxley

Those ideas were tested for viability, and then ranked according to complexity and likelihood of success.

And the winner was Surf Key. What’s Surf Key? Well, it looks like a Livestrong band in the shape of a diamond engagement ring. The ‘diamond’ is encased in the rubber and is, in fact, a device that can be coded to open your car door. Plus, the whole thing is waterproof. You can wear it in the surf.

This wasn’t the first prototype. We lovingly call that, The Spongecake, because it looked like a lamington that had shed its chocolate coating. Not exactly something you’d want to wear in public.

The project is a showcase item for Tribal for several reasons.
Firstly, it demonstrates our working methodology, which replaces the lengthy traditional agency model with a collaborative and agile workgroup mentality aimed at getting to tangible prototypes as quickly as possible.

Secondly, it demonstrates the movement of our business into solutions that are as much about hardware and products as they are software and platforms. We’re excited by those areas, because they are where we see the greatest opportunity and the most sizeable shift away from what was traditionally considered digital marketing.

Surf Key is going to become one of the ways in which one of our brands becomes more useful to its consumers. Chris Brown’s son thinks it is “brilliant”. So did all those who saw it at the Tribal Worldwide Australia relaunch.

Read TRIBAL TALK, how Tribal’s adland-Aus imports see the job at hand here and the road ahead.