Advertising: Longtime Innovator Has Seed Money for New Ones

Longtime Innovator Has Seed Money for New Ones

Sean Davis/Humanaut

Alex Bogusky, known in the ad industry for creativity, is taking a minority stake in Humanaut, an agency founded by Andrew Clark, left, and David Littlejohn, right.

IS Alex Bogusky becoming the Johnny Appleseed of advertising?

Mr. Bogusky is known in the industry for the risk-taking, rule-breaking creative ideas he came up with in the more than two decades he spent at Crispin Porter & Bogusky and its parent, MDC Partners. Since 2010, when he left MDC, he has started projects like Common and FearLess Revolution. He also joined Made Movement, a fledgling agency in Boulder, Colo., as a minority investor and creative adviser.

Now, Mr. Bogusky is helping an agency in Chattanooga, Tenn., open its doors by becoming a minority investor and creative adviser there, too. The new agency â€" in keeping with Mr. Bogusky’s seeming penchant for affiliating with nontraditionally named ventures â€" is known as Humanaut, a word coined from human and astronaut (or cosmonaut, if you are a Russian Op-Ed columnist).

“I’m the world’s smallest holding company,” Mr. Bogusky said, laughing.

When the Appleseed comparison was suggested, he said he liked it. “Just seeds in his pocket and holes in his pocket,” Mr. Bogusky said. “I’m just a guy with money falling out of my pocket.”

Mr. Bogusky knows one of the two founders of Humanaut, David Littlejohn, because they worked together in the Boulder office of Crispin Porter & Bogusky. The other Humanaut founder, Andrew Clark, is a longtime friend of Mr. Littlejohn’s; before starting Humanaut, they had collaborated for two years as consultants for start-ups â€" advising them in areas like brand identity and user experience â€" under the banner of a company with another unusual name, Pale Dot Voyage.

“David really, really inspired me during his time at C.P.B.,” Mr. Bogusky said, citing as an example an effort for Best Buy called Twelpforce, in which employees in Best Buy stores used Twitter to answer customers’ questions in real time.

“Andrew, who I met through David, is crazy smart,” Mr. Bogusky said, “and that’s always important.” Mr. Clark and Mr. Littlejohn worked with Mr. Bogusky several months ago on advertising for the SodaStream home soda-making system.

Mr. Bogusky said that, around the time he left MDC, he believed he was “out of ideas on how to innovate.” But recently, he added, “some potential ways to innovate have come to me through friends who want to do agencies.”

Although “a lot of people in advertising want to do ads,” Mr. Bogusky said, he preferred to be involved with people who want to “build products that add value to the experience” that consumers have with a brand.

Mr. Littlejohn, 31, is the chief creative director at Humanaut. Mr. Clark, 33, is the chief strategist.

“There’s a lot of great things that come along with Alex,” Mr. Littlejohn said. “There are some great connections he’s introduced us to.”

The name Humanaut is intended to suggest “kind of a human explorer,” Mr. Littlejohn said, “exploring the new frontier of digital and what it means to have these phones in our pockets, these glasses and watches.” He described Humanaut as “a brand invention agency, helping clients invent and innovate, using tools to innovate how people experience a product or business beyond advertising, helping start-ups that lack a brand identity or a brand story.”

On the agency’s Web site, humanaut.is, which is to go live on Wednesday, are declarations like “We are a creative agency exploring how brands and technology collide with humans.”

Humanaut is working with clients that include Friends of the Earth and Live Nation. The agency also works on developing and introducing products and brands.

One such initiative is Felt, an app that mixes high- and low-technology; after users write cards by hand on their iPads, the cards, with accompanying envelopes, are printed, sealed, stamped and mailed through the Postal Service. The Web site describes Felt as “exploring how handwriting and iPads collide with Mother’s Day.”

Another venture is Swoop, with a goal of enabling mobile users who are at football games, baseball games or other sporting events to sell their seats once they are inside a stadium or arena. Swoop is described on the Web site as “exploring how stadiums and mobile auctions collide with sports fans.”

“The Humanaut angle is using new technologies to reinvent age-old human experiences,” Mr. Clark said. “A lot of agencies out there are trying to navigate this space.”

Humanaut has seven employees and, according to Mr. Clark and Mr. Littlejohn, has ambitious growth plans. “We’re looking for designers and writers and developers,” Mr. Littlejohn said.

Chattanooga is not known for advertising agencies, but then again, neither was Boulder when Crispin Porter & Bogusky decided in 2006 to open an office there that would serve as a dual headquarters for the agency along with its operation in Miami.

Mr. Littlejohn said he opened Pale Dot Voyage in Chattanooga because he “had some family there,” adding, “There were huge amounts of opportunity and office space for what seemed like pocket change.” Mr. Clark moved to Chattanooga from Chicago to join him in fall 2011.

Mr. Bogusky called Chattanooga “a great, young market with a lot of cool talent, but affordable.”

Asked if he was interested in planting more seeds through additional investments in agencies, Mr. Bogusky replied: “I wish I had more of a plan around it, but right now, I don’t. If I do it again, I’d be more formal about it, but I don’t have plans right now to do it again.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2013, on page B5 of the New York edition with the headline: Longtime Innovator Has Seed Money for New Ones .