Who, where, when, why even is the Combine?
“WHAT is the Combine?”
It’s a good question. And the answer is so multipronged, there’s already a blog post dedicated to answering it. But, after spending some time here as the new guy, I thought I’d give myself (and maybe you) a better answer if I worded the question slightly differently.
So, “WHO is the combine?”
To that, the answer could damn near everyone we work with, collaborate with, meet up with, get coffee with, go into business with, or get into deep, intense discussions about the nature of creativity with.
Basically, if you’ve read this far — you might be one of us. If you’re part of the creative collective Tadiem, you for sure are.
On a regular day here, you’ll see people from OneMethod, Bensimon Byrne, Narrative, Folk— and our clients too — gathered here; as likely to be huddled in a brainstorm, as chatting about the latest pitch over clacking billiards balls, as tucked away, headphones-deep in a personal project, etc.
Expect to meet people who probably could have worked from home today but chose to come in.
Another helpful follow-up is then:
“WHERE is the combine?”
That one’s easy: 225 Wellington West. Come on by; the door’s always open— (and pull the handle WAY harder than you think you need your first time).
Once you get in, check out what’s on rotation in the pop-up gallery, located right in front of you– can’t miss it– or grab a bevy, up at Bevy, the coffee shop atop the stairs on your right. OR make a hard left down the hall, ’til you reach an open-plan workspace, hangout, b-ball half-court, full-service agency office…thing. I promise we do get work done here
Look south over an archipelago of laptops, monitors, and breakout rooms, and you’ll see a bunch of people who love what they do, doing some of the things they love most. Which involves lots of– you know. Stuff-we-love-doing.
O.K, O.K. That got vague. So now is a good time to break out your old pal from pre-school (if you ever had a problem with authority): “WHY?!??!!?”
So, yeah. “WHY is the Combine?”
Short answer: it felt like it.
Slightly longer answer: it felt like there was an empty space in our industry for down-to-earth, honest-to-goodness, balls-to-the-wall experimentation, and community building.
The people here wanted to fill that space. Or rather, become that space. Then open it up wide as possible, while staying true to a core purpose, and led by the people involved.
See, you have all these great agencies out there, pumping out amazing design, branding, storytelling, etc. But usually, they end up confined to a tight, little bubble people call “advertising”, making it rare for people outside that bubble to get to engage with its craft and its creative chaos, up-close and personal.
I guess you could call the Combine a yet-undefined creative entity, with a strongly felt purpose: making those rare moments a little less rare.
Someone wise once said, “nobody pays attention to ads. People read what interests them and sometimes it’s an ad.” So good. And wiser than ever.
So, at the Combine, people tend to focus their attention that way. Let sparks fly now, so you can blaze trails later. Every day— sometimes late into the evening if we feel like it— we try to imagine stuff we’d put into the world, if we all the world’s money. Then we try and make it, whether you give us money or not.
“Sometimes it’s an ad”. Usually with a totally novel spin. Sometimes a bottom-up rebrand for a client. Sometimes it’s a janky, opening-ceremony anthem for something called “The OMlympics”. Sometimes it’s a product line. Other times, an ice-cream chain. Or a sweet partnership with someone who used to work here, like the coffee shop upstairs. It may even be a grey-market taco stand that later becomes a global taco empire. Or our own magazine, dedicated to all-things-messed-up. Check out Homemade Issue 001 here.
That’s just a few examples of “why” we come to the combine. And why we think it works.
Which is a lot. So you’re probably wondering: “Where the hell do you find the time to do all that, between having home-lives, real families and real(ish) jobs?”
And that raises the question “WHEN is the Combine?”
Another tricky one to answer. Since, in one sense, it just launched. Like, paint-still-drying, rocket-fumes-hanging-in-the-air, just launched.
Especially with the recent remodel of our workspace at John and Wellington, we’re still breaking in the very idea of what it can be.
But in an equally true sense, goings-on in the spirit of the Combine have been happening since way before we decided we needed to, well, Combine them.
Whether it was throwing events, dropping products, accelerating side-hustles that became international chains, or whatever — all the Combine’s labs, collabs, and launches and have been in one steady orbit around a restless, gooey centre of creativity since day one. Whenever that was.
Just a few key moments in the Combine’s timeline:
The origins of Luigi's speakeasy.
The release of Homemade, a Combine artbook,
The inaugural pop-up shop in the remodeled space.
Young Dave Banging Music video Launch
So chronologically, you could put the Combine’s development anywhere from toddlerhood to raging-hormonal adolescence— either way, it feels like we’re just seeing the start of its potential as an accelerator for making things, people and ideas happen.
And that brings us back to that Frequently Asked Question: “WTF is the Combine?” Well, hopefully, it’s slightly clearer now. Or at least more obscure in an inviting way; The Combine is whatever it is we’re making, day-to-day. Come say hey, today.
END
Appendix
If you’re reading this, it’s not too late. Very early thinking actually. A work in progress about a work in progress?
It’s kind of a blog. Kind of a first week on-the-job, quick and dirty diary entry, and an exercise in reiterating the goal of the piece “WTF is the Combine”, albeit from a slightly different direction.
People curious about our work may often ask us what the Combine is. And it’s a good question.
But what if “what?” is the wrong question to start out with? , you’ll probably get a better idea if you start with one of the other 5 W’s. You know, “who, where, when” and, of course, “why.”
— Jules