In his study of 100 fastest-growing corporations, Salim Ismail found that most fast-growing companies have a clear purpose. By purpose, he did not mean the familiar mission-vision statement, though. Ismail was talking about a “massive transformative purpose (MTP).”
The term itself sums up what an MTP is: audacious, aspirational, and seeks to produce a significant change in society—think of SpaceX’s “Humans must become an interplanetary species” or Google’s “Organize the world’s information.”
They’re stated simply, but their implications are vast. Here at StraightArrow, we have an MTP of our own: Create for the World.
The change we aim to create for the world is to see Filipino creatives delivering to develop standards across the globe, pursuing careers among the best of the best.
For the past seven years, in pursuit of our MTP, we have practiced, studied, and refined the business of creative process outsourcing (CPO).
Creative Process Outsourcing
StraightArrow Managing Director Haraya “Ia” Del Rosario-Gust was recently invited to speak at the CreatePH 2017 forum, an event that gathered world-renowned Filipinos in advertising, cinema, and video gaming to share their insights and experiences with the creative community.
While other speakers detailed their journeys toward creative success, Ia presented a business case for CPO. She shared how individuals and communities can turn their passion into a business and how to do that well, based on what we’ve learned over the years.
For a better idea of CPO, think of digital advertising or marketing as a two-sided endeavor: conceptualization and strategy development on the one hand and execution on the other.
CPO focuses on executing processes according to methods that clients themselves develop.
“We think of [our clients] as creative think tanks, and we are the creative muscle.”
This is something StraightArrow learned the hard way. Early forays into conceptualizing foreign markets had mixed results.
However, our efforts were successful when we focused on executing end-to-end processes according to our clients’ strategies.
The best CPO setups, in our experience, involve clients with solid marketing strategies and agencies with reliable, scalable processes.
This proven process for CPO opens up a global market. Clients develop insight-driven strategies, and CPOs execute these strategies across different media.
The Philippines is well positioned to do the latter:
Availability
The Philippine creative process outsourcing industry hit its stride with outsourced animation in the ‘80s and has since grown to deliver graphic design, digital design, content creation, and marketing automation services.
Flexibility
The biggest Philippine cities—and their creatives—never quite sleep. Outsourced teams work different shifts to support clients wherever they are in the world.
Cost Arbitrage
The cost of creative services in the Philippines is significantly less than in significant economies. Also, as the creative process becomes more complex and the skill levels required to deliver them increase, the cost variance rises exponentially.
These factors make CPO viable for Filipino creatives to pursue creative careers. In the face of increasing automation, higher creative skill sets can help shore up the local outsourcing industry.
These two aspects—individual and national—make CPO our way of Creating for the World.
As Ia said in her speech, “The market is there. The timing is right. Some work still needs to be done, but we’re an archipelago of creatives—we can make it happen.”
If you’d like to help us make it happen, don’t hesitate to contact us.
If you want to join us and Create for the World, know that our doors are always open to creatives of passion and integrity.
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