Best Arts Online Campaign

The Critical Mass: Artist-In-Residence Program (CM:AIR) is a unique artist-agency collaboration. The goal–ushering in new industry standards for partnering with artists, by first opening dialogue about artist-brand exploitation. Founded by artist Shantell Martin and Critical Mass, CM:AIR is a bold new initiative to enact rapid industry-wide change by offering tangible support to artists. As beacons of creativity they bring agencies an invaluable perspective, and therefore should be respected and collaborated with fairly. The unfortunate reality is that all too often the creative potential for these relationships gets bogged down in unfair contracts or power imbalances.

Contributors:

CRITICAL MASS

Website: www.criticalmass.com

Location: United States

About the Agency:

Critical Mass is a team of 1500 inspired folks based in 12 offices around the world. We provide full-service digital capabilities for the greatest brands on Earth, but our secret sauce is our uncompromising design standards, our relentless focus on customers, and an ability to put powerful new technologies to work for our clients. We’re sought by brands who strive for connected digital ecosystems, and we help them get there by gaining deep insight into their consumer and orchestrating data, AI, design, media, and tech stacks around human stories. We’re a global agency founded in Canada, but digital is our home. If you know us, then you know we’re a special, quirky place that attracts big talent and tiny egos. (We actually give out a “so F-n nice” award—lots of them). But just because we’re friendly doesn’t mean we’re not a force to be reckoned with. We’re driven. Relentless. We live our values and hold ourselves to uncompromising design standards (which is probably why our clients stick with us for 7 years, on average). We’re also proud to be part of Omnicom, one of the largest holding companies for global advertising, marketing, digital, and communications services firms (serving more than 5,000 clients in over 100 countries). We’re Critical Mass, but our friends call us CM. Please call us CM!