After a decade of collaborating with high-profile fashion brands and creating licensed artwork with pop-culture icons, Ikonick co-founders Jeff Cole and Mark Mastrandrea are launching a creative agency: Open Residency. This new agency will deliver groundbreaking campaigns and design work for digitally native brands through access to Ikonick’s in-house creative team, an extensive artist network, and a select artist management roster curated exclusively by Cole.
Jeff Cole, known to his 750K Instagram followers as @cole has established a cult following as a result of his otherworldly, hype sneaker driven social content and viral campaign work including creative directing Nike and Adidas marketing campaigns, canvas collections with brands like Monopoly and NBA, and getting reposts of historic moments made by @cole from names like LeBron James, J Balvin, Lewis Hamilton and Chris Brown.
“It’s time to break the traditional agency model,” says Cole in a statement to GRAZIA. “Now more than ever, creativity needs to live at the forefront of brand campaigns to win over the hearts and minds of consumers. We’re living in a digital age and from first-hand experience building our own brand, we know that marrying creativity with the overall business strategy is key to success.”
Joining Cole on the Open Residency artist management roster at launch to serve third party clients and also produce proprietary NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are award-winning Disney Animation artist, Alex Alvarado, and Israeli born 3D artist and 21st Century Sculptor, Gal Yosef, who is currently working on NFT designs for Popeye, which will be one of the first drops coming soon.
Open Residency will provide a suite of innovative creative services to brands including; 3D animation, NFT design and distribution, motion graphics, video editing and visual effects, concept creation, art directing, and storyboarding. Digital marketing services include social strategy development, ambassador programming, partnerships and collaborations, press placement and digital media integration. Clients and partners on the Open Residency roster will also gain access to an exclusive network of existing agency relationships with reputable brands including KITH, Nike, Adidas, Disney, SEGA, Viacom, Marvel, Authentic Brands Group, and more.
“Open Residency is a passion project for us, it’s a natural extension of the work we already do behind the scenes with Ikonick,” added Mastrandrea. We receive frequent inbound inquiries from brands and individuals looking for creative guidance, advice and support. We’re bringing together best in class artists and digital marketers to build an unmatched creative hub that blue chip brands and individuals can trust to execute campaigns at the highest level. We’re excited to represent brands that fight our ethos and vision of storytelling above all.”
