Karmarama Launches Krank Initiative for Staff

Karmarama has launched a new initiative encouraging innovation and entrepreneurialism, which allows staff to develop their own products and ideas with support from the agency.

The agency-wide initiative, called Krank, is being run by Karmarama’s head of digital Lawrence Weber, the chief creative officer, Dave Buonaguidi and head of planning, Dan Hill.

Karmarama has put £100,000 into a Krank fund to develop progressive ideas and creative uses of technology generated by employees. Krank supports innovative ideas beyond traditional marketing, from tech innovations to fun, useful and culturally valuable products and services.

Staff members are given the opportunity to pitch their ideas to the senior Krank team. If they are accepted, the agency will invest and enable them to develop the product or enterprise. 

Karmarama will share revenue, IP, equity and profit with the person who comes up with the idea.

The initiative is part of Karmarama’s ongoing strategy of nurturing a spirit of entrepreneurialism in the agency and empowering staff to innovate. 

Krank launches with three new products, such as Perk and Pi in the Sky, all of which originated as ideas from Karmarama employees. 

Perk is a web-based consumer survey tool that rewards consumers for answering questions and giving feedback on products and services they’ve used. Customers are directed to Perk online via receipts, emails and SMS. Karmarama is working with Jamie’s Italian restaurants to roll out a BETA version of Perk, ahead of a full product launch.

Pi in the Sky is a piece of photobooth technology which allows people to take aerial selfies by texting a camera rigged up above them. Karmarama built it using a Rasberry Pi, the British single-board computer, and launched it at Glastonbury last summer for a White Ribbon Alliance campaign where festivalgoers posed in a 3x4 metre Polaroid frame on the ground to take aerial shots of themselves.

Lawrence Weber said: “Krank isn’t about creating a passive museum of tech demos that get ignored, or thought leadership in the Twitter echo chamber. We’re making creatively useful things that we and our clients can drive real learning and value from.”

Ben Bilboul, the chief executive of Karma Comms Group, said: “Innovation is key to our industry’s future and Krank demonstrates our passion for nurturing entrepreneurial talent. By encouraging our staff to be entrepreneurial through Krank we want to empower them to innovate.”