Sydney-based adtech MagicBrief has just secured $2 million in funding to help marketing teams and agencies power their creative workflow.
“With more big brands moving away from an agency model and bringing their creative teams in-house, I noticed that they were still adopting outdated creative processes, the same workflows they had learnt from traditional advertising agencies”, says MagicBrief co-founder and CEO George Howes.
Howes, after a two years as creative director at Eucalyptus, saw an opportunity to help marketers level up their efforts. He teamed up with co-founder Dan Nolan to bring MagicBrief to life.
The pre-seed funding round was led by Nick Crocker at Blackbird VC in conjunction with Archangel Ventures. Other investors include Zach Klein, the founder of Vimeo, Matt Miller founder of UsTwo, Tim Doyle founder of Eucalyptus, Alex Badran founder of Spriggy, and Craig Piggot founder of Halter.
Nick Crocker, general partner at Blackbird, says creative is the highest leverage part of performance marketing.
"MagicBrief helps people pull that lever," he says.
"George (Howes) has already left an indelible mark on the Blackbird portfolio having helped build an early version of Halter's app, and being creative director at Eucalyptus. Alongside Dan, and the team, we are already seeing some magic in what the team's built."
Howes says there’s a growing number of tech products that focus on analytics, tracking and attribution, but the most impactful variable, the creative itself, has largely been forgotten when it comes to marketing technology.
"Most team leads don’t really want to think about workflows or the creative process: they just need a high output of proven concepts that can generate enough sales so they can afford to take bigger creative swings," says Howes.
MagicBrief has already attracted the attention of industry heavy-hitters, including health-tech startup Eucalyptus, Solawave, Lyka and Darkroom.
One client, canned mocktail makers Yes You Can, has already lowered acquisition costs by 85% since employing MagicBrief’s product.
The platform, though not yet a year old, already has thousands of users from hundreds of high performance marketing teams around the world, with its biggest market being the US.
Rolling three key elements into one, MagicBrief combines sourcing inspiration for brands to find their voice and aesthetic, concepting to build ideas that can convert sales, and briefing, to give creators—whether influencers, writers, or celebrity endorsements—a suite of brand knowledge, values, as well as creative guidelines, all in the one place.
MagicBrief backer and Eucalyptus CEO Tim Doyle says digital marketing is constantly having to evolve.
"Evolve to dodge pain points that are created by, say SEO changes, or a social media company’s policies being updated. Or even a new competitor that can pop up on the block literally overnight," says Doyle.
“A bunch of creatives sitting in a room together concepting ideas just isn’t fast enough these days for many brands to keep their heads above water, and it’s definitely not an effective use of modern marketing budgets that rely on eschewing any excess spending in favour of known successes. This often leads to safe, but bland creative work.”
Another major factor for MagicBrief’s successful launch, according to Howes, is timing.
“Startups and established brands alike are responding to economic pressures; tightening their belts. Having a smaller team of creatives in-house is low-hanging fruit, if they can get it right. Platforms like Tiktok are driving an overwhelming push towards short-form interest-based video creative, and requiring a growing number of these assets that many companies are struggling to keep up with.”
“The algorithms behind most major social media platforms reward better creative work with more viewers and hence more profit for the brand. MagicBrief takes those learnings and reverse engineers them for the brand’s sake”
“All creative output costs money. With MagicBrief, you can cut straight through the fat to what is proven to work, and have it live within hours.”
The $2 million investment will enable the team to continue building their flagship product, as well as refining their offering, which now includes MagicAI, that breaks down other brands’ ads for you (currently in BETA testing).
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