User:Idaimages/Big Spaceship

Big Spaceship is a digital creative agency located in Brooklyn, New York. The company, which specializes in interactive marketing and communications, was founded in 2000 by Michael Lebowitz and Daniel Federman. Lebowitz also co-founded SoDA (the Society of Digital Agencies) in 2008. Big Spaceship’s clients include Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Coca-Cola, OfficeMax, Corona, Warner Bros., HBO, UrbanDaddy, Epson, Glacéau, Nike, Royal Caribbean, Adobe and Target.

Background
Big Spaceship was launched during the dot-com bubble. During those years, interactive agencies emerged in response to demand for creative and marketing solutions for digital media, which largely defied the existing marketing standards of print and broadcast media. Through experiential, immersive work, Big Spaceship set out to improve the ways technology would evolve storytelling and interactive communications.

As digital agencies became more skilled at innovating within the rapidly evolving interactive space, traditional advertising agencies increasingly sought to partner or contract digital work from them. This practice has led to disputes about creative ideas and the expansion and execution of those ideas within interactive channels. Big Spaceship found itself at the center of such disputes at the 2008 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, when BBDO New York accepted several awards for The HBO Voyeur Project. BBDO credited Big Spaceship as a production company, despite the digital agency’s larger role in evolving the creative concept for interactive media. Big Spaceship CEO Michael Lebowitz responded by encouraging an open dialogue within the industry, advocating for appropriate or shared credit when agencies of different specialties collaborate.

Company Evolution
Big Spaceship was formed when the commercial internet was in its formative years. The innovation the agency relied on then continues to drive Big Spaceship. Much of its early work was done for the movie industry, with Sony Pictures, Miramax Films and Paramount Pictures, among others. While it continues to do work in the entertainment field, it now partners with a wide variety of consumer brands. In 2008, Big Spaceship was selected by Linden Lab to redesign the user experience for Second Life based on its strategic expertise. The agency is also known for developing visually rich, real-time multiplayer online games.

Business Practices
Digital agencies have developed a variety of business models and production methods to meet the creative demands of digital media. Big Spaceship’s evolving structure, which focuses on a multi-disciplinary, team-based system, was studied by Harvard Business School. The resulting case study case study, released in February of 2009, posed the question of how Big Spaceship would continue to grow while maintaining the culture that has sustained its success.

The agency’s creative process and emphasis on collaboration were also explored in a 2008 Lynda.com documentary “Creative Inspirations”.

Awards
Big Spaceship has received many accolades for its work, including Clio Awards, The One Show, Webby Awards and Design Week awards. It has received more Favourite Website Awards (FWAs) than any other company and was the first American agency inducted into the FWA Hall of Fame. The agency was named one of the “World’s Leading Independent Agencies" in 2009 by thenetworkone and Campaign Magazine.