With the single click of a button, iStrategyLabs’ PiePal allows you to order a Dominos pizza, no communication or effort involved. While the product – which might be released in beta soon – seems to be the lazy man’s dream come true, it has the potential to be scaled into something bigger and more impactful like a one-touch emergency button. But creating products like the PiePal isn’t really what iStrategyLabs was founded to do. Started as a digital and experiential agency, iStrategyLabs, for the most part, is regarded as a leader in helping brands drive awareness to their products and events. Six years later, though, the technology (among other things) is immensely different, and because of it, so is iStrategyLabs.
The backbone of the current iStrategyLabs iteration is Social Machines, connecting the social everyday interactions of human beings to the machinery around us. But that doesn’t mean just through social media – this is social interaction of every sort. “Social machines may be social by definition, but not social in that they’re necessarily powered by social media,” said iStrategyLabs CMO DJ Saul. “As far as the physical things that we might create – as a product, as a stunt, for a brand, for a client, for a venue – whatever it is, we’re really starting to think about what could trigger this thing, or how can you engage with this thing? That’s more about a physical gesture or a voice or the number of people in a venue, for example, as opposed to a hashtag or ‘like’ on Facebook.”
This is a bit of a stretch from what Peter Corbett first started the agency for in late 2007, though. For a while it was just him working out of his Logan Circle apartment until he brought on his brother as COO and then DJ Saul in 2009. One of their earliest projects was a stunt for Destination D.C. and National Geographic. “We came up with the idea to source 2,000 mini terra cotta warrior statues and hang a custom tag that we printed around their neck driving people to a microsite for a sweepstakes to see if they won a hotel and Amtrak and restaurant package to come to Nat Geo and see the exhibit,” Saul said.
Since then, though, they've pivoted somewhat away from that bootstrapped, experiential marketing to become more purely digital. Now they do things like their Redd's Apple Launcher and the SpongeBob crane game, using the limits of current technology to show off their clients. And it’s been a long time in the making. “It’s a nice culmination of things we’ve been focusing on, technologies we’ve been experimenting with, people we recently brought on board that were able to bring those things to life,” Saul said. “Let’s call it two years ago – if I saw some of the blog posts that were written in the last couple weeks about the PiePal, you know an Internet-connected button that orders you pizza, I would’ve said that’s pretty cool, but I don’t see that being something we would focus on. And here we are. And I could totally see that same dynamic happening two years from now.”
All that said, the agency’s main drive is still the same. “We’re still at the end of the day all about trying to push the boundaries and do things that have never been done before, and then ultimately help bring a really, really interesting and fresh perspective and idea to life whether online, offline or both,” Saul said. And they continue to thrive doing so. With huge clients like the Washington Redskins, General Electric and Disney, they’re driving love to massive brands with complex marketing issues. But in the future, there’s always a chance they pivot even more, perhaps to build products like the PiePal (which was initially born as more of something fun), rather than just offering services. But for now, the team of 36 is focused on merging technology and marketing to spike brand awareness for their clients.
