Swedish software company BURT, co-founded by Gustav von Sydow and Gustav Martner, ECD of Crispin Porter + Bogusky Europe, releases a free version of its online campaign analytics product this week. This pioneering product development has a waiting list of 900 agencies, which essentially helps creatives to be the best they can be.
The product, Rich, is aimed at creative agencies and has been incubated at Daddy, the Swedish creative agency which was acquired by CP+B in June, becoming CP+B Europe. The main idea for Rich is to provide a more efficient feedback loop for copywriters, art directors and other creatives. so that they can learn from their previous work.
The knowledge of its founders in how creative agencies work gives Burt a very different perspective – not to mention motivation – than other software companies. Using this in-depth understanding of how agencies work to drive decisions, Burt is in a rare position to create tools that agencies will actually use.
Co-founder, Gustav von Sydow, says, “Burt makes software that taps into the knowledge of creative agencies, an under-served but extremely critical audience in online advertising. We help buyers of advertising to understand how online media works, and help them create the more clever, entertaining and cost-effective campaigns.”
Rich has used by Daddy since May for monitoring campaigns by a number of clients, including airline SAS and telecoms company TeliaSonera, with the payment model based on media volume.
Burt is changing the payment model to introduce a basic free version because it wants Rich to be as widely used by the industry as possible. It will charge for premium services such as media quality audits and campaign pre-testing.
Von Sydow continues, “We’ve had campaigns running on Rich for various advertisers since May. Up until now advertisers have been charged based on media volume, but we’re moving to a model where the basic version of Rich can be used free of charge. Starting in January, we’ll be adding premium services such as media quality audit and pre-testing”.
The metrics available in the free version include whether an ad was placed in plain view, how long the ad was visible, how many people who saw it engaged with it and how many clicked through.
Burt’s founders are Gustav Martner, who still works full-time as the executive creative director of CP+B Europe, and Gustav von Sydow, who now works full-time for Burt and was formerly a planner at Daddy.
Von Sydow continues: “One of the most important insights we have from Daddy/CP+B is that most creative agencies love technology – and metrics for that matter – so long as it’s packaged to fit in with how they operate and their needs. Most people seem to attribute creative agencies’ lack of interest for metrics as a sign that creative agencies aren’t that concerned about quality, but Burt knows that this is flat out wrong.”
ABOUT BURT
Burt was launched to solve daily challenges facing any modern agency: leveraging new technologies, understanding new channels, getting things done in time and on budget. www.burtcorp.com
Last year Burt presented its first product at Techcrunch50, one the world’s most prestigious events for launching new technology. They showed Copybox – ‘the Photoshop for copywriters’, a software that also landed an award at this year’s Cannes Lions, making Burt one of few companies to be spotlighted on major venues for both technology and creative advertising. Copybox is still under development, but Burt is focusing most effort right now on building Rich, a campaign analytics tool for digital media.
ABOUT ‘RICH’
Providing metrics for campaign performance is an old idea, but for various reasons reports aren’t really being used by the creative agencies on a wide scale. And if the people actually making ads aren’t using the metrics tools to get feedback on their work, what difference can we expect the reports to make?
In Burt’s experience, getting creative agencies to use technology is not that hard if you manage to create something that allows them to do better stuff, on time and within budget. It’s really as simple as that. Burt decided they would be the first company to create an analytics tool that creatives actually wanted to use.
Rich is a metrics tool that the agency controls, that enables creatives to analyze cross-advertiser and get insights from all their campaigns. A big part of what Burt is doing with Rich is packaging campaigns metrics in a more appealing way for this audience.
