Former Ogilvy Creative Director Varun Katyal launches automated content platform - Clapboard

Varun Katyal, the former Senior Creative Director at Ogilvy, has announced the launch of Clapboard - an automated content production platform.

As per him, Clapboard engineers the skill sets of an agency producer into AI form, giving brands direct access to best-in-class talent. It is aimed at making content production democratic, transparent and super quick.

Clapboard is digital-first content production start-up. It’s an agency-agnostic, brand content production platform that combines craft insight and technology to bring creative work to life. Clapboard is an app, a transparent cost benchmarking tool, an aggregator of directors, cinematographers, actors and more. 

In its first offering, Clapboard helps brands and agencies line up full blown film crews with the click of just a few buttons. The app virtually assembles talent, generates three transparent quotations and gets brand teams PPM ready.

It is a comprehensive ecosystem that automates the discovery and booking of talent, whilst gathering live data on availability and also sorting out all the paperwork.

The platform aims at creating a level playing field for talent not associated with large production houses or who are not on the radar of big agencies.

Katyal explained that agencies create disruptive ideas for their clients, but as an industry, advertising has failed to reinvent its own act, with this in mind, he founded Clapboard. 

“I wholeheartedly believe advertising is transitioning into a new era of work where we need to rethink how our workforces are built and networked. We need to lean into a hybrid approach which enables access to talent with the right skill set at the right time. Using established and emerging technologies we can transform the agency offering,” he stated.

He said lack of transparency in film production and inflated production cost plague the creative industry. This is where technologies like blockchain can serve as the perfect antidote to the kickback culture that exists in film procurement. It is time the industry invested in tools to check for transparency and also make it democratic for the new talent in the industry.

“We set out to codify our experience and knowledge as creative directors and producers to create an automated process that better served the talent and the marketers. After a trip down the rabbit hole of technology, sharing the initial proof of concept with some clients and talents and countless hours of coding, the platform is ready. Next, there are a host of other services that will be rolled out in the coming months,” he added.

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