Winter 1996.
Right when you were half through your first job at DDB, a boy got born in the middle of nowhere, also known by its other name: town of Kolomyia, in the Western Ukraine.Parents called him Serhii, which he later changed to Serge, to sound more pretentiously European.
Right when you were half through your first job at DDB, a boy got born in the middle of nowhere, also known by its other name: town of Kolomyia, in the Western Ukraine.Parents called him Serhii, which he later changed to Serge, to sound more pretentiously European.
A year later, another nothing suspecting child with the name Oksana gets born in a town 55 km away from Kolomyia — Tysmennytsia.
At that time, the only thing they had in common was the urge to belong to something bigger than where they're from.
Wasn't really working.
Before meeting each other, each tried lots of solo-ventures, with little to no substantial outcome.
Accidentally got into the gaming business together: Serge just failed with his French creperie van in a local park; Oksana kept grinding with her art career.
But one day while doomscrolling local FB Serge saw a beautiful digital image that Oksana drew & posted.
But one day while doomscrolling local FB Serge saw a beautiful digital image that Oksana drew & posted.
It looked like a screenshot from a game.
A serious deal merger was established — she'll draw, Serge will look for clients.
For some reason, it worked.
Very slowly, bumpy, with no life outside, but eventually it worked and became Outstandly.
Here is our website: https://www.outstandly.com/
It just recently won an Awwwards honourable mention nomination whatever that means.
It's still the two of us.
And a project manager in Brazil.
And a handful of contractors in exotic places.
Over the past 7 years we had the honour of working with large Nasdaq trading companies like Opera, VC-backed web 3.0 firms like SUP (co-founded by the guy who made and sold Vine to Twitter for $30 million), and also a bunch of indie businesses and startups.
At peak project schedules, we've managed around 40 contractors providing output daily.
At peak project schedules, we've managed around 40 contractors providing output daily.
We always treasured opportunities where we could be more involved in the creative side of the business though.
Which in our current business model — outsource, is sadly not often the case.
Most of the time, it's more about ''make this character run for 20 seconds pls'' projects.
Around 2 years ago we went travelling off-grid to the Socotra island.
It was supposed to be a short-ish trip.
That's where we learned about the war and that we can't go back.
So, with 2 of our backpacks, we bounced around for a bit and ended up in London.
We like it here.
But it's a bit tough.
So we decided we'd make a leap of faith and do something differently.
We figured your team must be getting lots of Jehovah's Witnesses knocking at his front doors, so we thought maybe we'd check from the back door.
Just in case you're having barbecue in the garden.
How we got in touch with Kate Stanners
In a nutshell.
Designing a fake delivery company sounded like the most reasonable way of contacting a person.
So, we created a fake delivery company called Future Delivers.
We went full in with it by creating a custom website https://www.futuredelivers.com, blog, easter eggs like extra domain https://tikwitter.com, etc.
The premise of the company is that it delivers parcels from the future. So future-you in 2064 can send parcels to past-you in 2024 with news, advice to buy bitcoin, warnings, etc.
So, on January 25, Oksana and Serge, dressed in branded futuristic ''Future Delivers'' attire took their robot dog Arthur and parcel addressed to Kate Stanners to Saatchi & Saatchi headquarters.
So, on January 25, Oksana and Serge, dressed in branded futuristic ''Future Delivers'' attire took their robot dog Arthur and parcel addressed to Kate Stanners to Saatchi & Saatchi headquarters.
The box was custom-painted by Oksana by hand with a metallic liquid chrome marker.
Upon opening the box, a host greets Kate.
In that box she finds and envelope with pictures from her future:
Then, she takes out the antique box, opens it and finds a tablet inside.
Upon unlocking it, she sees this video, where we cloned her voice and appearance and made a movie trailer-like piece with a message.
Feel free to go through the whole experience by the link below. When prompted with any input, feel free to enter dummy letters.
Upon unlocking it, she sees this video, where we cloned her voice and appearance and made a movie trailer-like piece with a message.
Feel free to go through the whole experience by the link below. When prompted with any input, feel free to enter dummy letters.
Please note, this video was our early version, we now significantly improved the quality.
And obviously with more time/budget — this can be increased much more.
And obviously with more time/budget — this can be increased much more.
Spoiler to what happens next
1) she watches the video;
2) at the end there is a call to action to learn who are we;
3) Once clicked, there is a video from Oksana and Serge, after which she can reply with either text, audio or video;
4) Once replied, she thinks that's the end of the experience, but actually she gets redirected to a credits page, where we created a custom song for her.
As a bonus, we hope this approach sort of works as our extra portfolio, showing a broad range of stuff we can cook and execute on a rather shoestring budget and time scale. Imagine we'd had a budget?