Riverphonic provides advisory services that have been tailored for new ventures and start-ups to innovate in the experiential arena. The front end of innovation is by definition unfamiliar territory: finding talent can be a crap shoot; standard terminology for essential skills and processes rarely exists; visions need sketching out; business models have to be built from scratch… The ability to pull all these nebulous things together in a coordinated fashion, to project into the zone of the unknown and formulate a coherent strategy, is what we call ‘creative intelligence’. We keep it lean and nimble, so you can hit the ground running with a workable plan and the right team to suit your budget.
Convergence Strategy
This can mean different things to different people. Here’s what it means to us: You’ve got a space to fill or an event to manage with an audience of customers, guests, fans, attendees and such. Who are they, Where are they, What is the Experience you want them to have, How can the convergence of physical and digital technologies make that happen, and What’s the net result you want to get out of the whole thing?
We start from the premise that most everyone will be carrying a mobile phone (we’ve been developing experiences on location-sensitive devices since 2007). Can we leverage the capabilities of the existing hardware, or should we deploy some preconfigured tablets or custom develop some wearables for folks to take home? Do you want to maintain engagement after the experience has ended? In which case would an embedded app or an always-on wearable be a useful means of keeping in touch and collecting data? Would voice activation improve the user experience, allowing the user to chat or interact on the internet while keeping their hands free? Can the experience be embellished with Augmented Reality, attaching data to physical objects and overlaying the real-life vista with computer animations?
Like it or not, we took a step towards singularity when we first picked up a talking computer, and another step when we filled it with all our personal information and forgot how to let it go. At Riverphonic we take a future-forward approach and make it our business to know everything we can about the potential of these awesome little machines.
Creative Concierge
Over three decades based in New York and London but tapped into creative communities from all around the world, Riverphonic has built a network of talent in music, video, graphic art, costuming, performance art, fabrication, photography, UX & UI design, iOS & Android development, projection mapping, AR and VR… as well as world-renowned writers, journalists, DJs, dancers, MCs and storytellers of every variety.
As technology advances and art evolves, it is a challenge to find people with cutting-edge skills, especially in the Experience industry. Our concierge service does not stop at making the connections: after sourcing and contacting the talent, we advise on commercial terms and in some cases handle negotiations, applying collaborative frameworks and nurturing partnerships in the belief that Collaboration is the new competitive advantage.
Venture Modelling
Riverphonic has played a key role in launching numerous successful start-up ventures, projects and events - delivering projections, plans and feasibility studies, pitching investors, securing funds and managing seven-figure P&Ls. While primarily a creative production outfit, we’re also a buttoned-down operation that has been entrusted with $multi-million in-house projects at companies such as Viacom, Publicis-Sapient and Verizon Wireless.
In parallel with business planning and foundational thinking for projects and ventures, we run an Ideation Lab, adopting the Design Sprint framework of Google Ventures. We work with event producers, promoters, creative teams, project leads, brand managers and founders to research new trends, analyze consumer behaviors, evaluate disruptive technologies, scope out concepts for innovation and prototype new ideas.
Our secret is that we’ve been there too and we know the drill. By keeping one eye on creativity and the other on viability, we help our partners to navigate the road from inception to fruition.
Audio Branding
As told in Our Story, Riverphonic’s in-house label Journeys by DJ has been releasing commercial DJ mixes for longer than any other company in the world. A bridge between brands and clubland since the mid-90s, we have produced star-studded audio-driven campaigns for retail chains, hotels, magazines, fashion brands, liquor sponsors and more. We have a wealth of connections and experience in the music industry, and deep relationships with leading music journals and international tastemakers going back 25 years.
Our process is based on the traditional methodology of defining identity according to Jungian archetypes – and it extends to a diaspora of cultural aficionados with intimate understanding of audience emotional responses, ensuring that we always deliver originality and avoid the dreaded cliché. Sound, after all, has the most emotional impact of any single sense. So please, don’t be like the bride’s mother who spent five times as much on flowers as on the DJ, and ended up at the wedding, dancing with a geranium.
Whether it’s a soundtrack, a sonic mnemonic or a root-and-branch audio identity overhaul that you are looking for, our rigorous approach breaks from the constraints of agency storytelling and applies constructs from the universal language of music, recoding the brand narrative to deliver more diverse and culturally resonant expressions of its purpose.