Winter 1996.
Two years before Mark gonna found Cake.
In the middle of nowhere, also known by its other name: town of Kolomyia, in the Western Ukraine, a boy got born.
Parents called him Serhii, which he later changed to Serge, to sound more pretentiously European.
Two years before Mark gonna found Cake.
In the middle of nowhere, also known by its other name: town of Kolomyia, in the Western Ukraine, a boy got born.
Parents called him Serhii, which he later changed to Serge, to sound more pretentiously European.
A year later, another nothing suspecting child with the name Oksana gets born in a town 55 km away from Kolomyia — Tysmenytsia.
At that time, the only thing they had in common was the urge to belong to something bigger than where they're from.
Wasn't really working.
Before meeting each other, each tried lots of solo-ventures, with little to no substantial outcome.
Accidentally got into the gaming business together: Serge just failed with his French creperie van in a local park; Oksana kept grinding with her art career.
But one day while doomscrolling local FB Serge saw a beautiful digital image that Oksana drew & posted.
But one day while doomscrolling local FB Serge saw a beautiful digital image that Oksana drew & posted.
It looked like a screenshot from a game.
A serious deal merger was established — she'll draw, Serge will look for clients.
For some reason, it worked.
Very slowly, bumpy, with no life outside, but eventually it worked and became Outstandly.
Here is our website: https://www.outstandly.com/
It just recently won an Awwwards honourable mention nomination whatever that means.
It's still the two of us.
And a project manager in Brazil.
And a handful of contractors in exotic places.
Over the past 7 years we had the honour of working with large Nasdaq trading companies like Opera, VC-backed web 3.0 firms like SUP (co-founded by the guy who made and sold Vine to Twitter for $30 million), and also a bunch of indie businesses and startups.
At peak project schedules, we've managed around 40 contractors providing output daily.
At peak project schedules, we've managed around 40 contractors providing output daily.
We always treasured opportunities where we could be more involved in the creative side of the business though.
Which in our current business model — outsource, is sadly not often the case.
Most of the time, it's more about ''make this character run for 20 seconds pls'' projects.
Around 2 years ago we went travelling off-grid to the Socotra island.
It was supposed to be a short-ish trip.
That's where we learned about the war and that we can't go back.
So, with 2 of our backpacks, we bounced around for a bit and ended up in London.
We like it here.
But it's a bit tough.
So we decided we'd make a leap of faith and do something differently.
We figured Mark must be getting lots of Jehovah's Witnesses knocking at his front doors, so we thought maybe we'd check from the back door.
Just in case he's chilling in the garden.
How we got in touch with Mark Whelan.
In a nutshell.
Designing a fake delivery company sounded like the most reasonable way of contacting a person.
So, we created a fake delivery company called Future Delivers.
We went full in with it by creating a custom website https://www.futuredelivers.com, blog, easter eggs like extra domain https://tikwitter.com, etc.
The premise of the company is that it delivers parcels from the future. So future-you in 2064 can send parcels to past-you in 2024 with news, advice to buy bitcoin, warnings, etc.
So, on March 27, Oksana and Serge, dressed in branded futuristic ''Future Delivers'' attire took their
robot-dog Arthur and parcel addressed to Mark Whelan to HAVAS headquarters.
So, on March 27, Oksana and Serge, dressed in branded futuristic ''Future Delivers'' attire took their
robot-dog Arthur and parcel addressed to Mark Whelan to HAVAS headquarters.
We custom painted the box with a pen-plotter robot that we assembled in our living room.
Upon opening the box, a host greets Mark, telling him that he got the parcel
from the future-self with some good news and advice.
In that box he finds a branded wax-sealed envelope with pictures from his future:
Then, he takes out the antique box, opens it and finds a tablet inside.
Upon unlocking it, he sees this video, where we cloned his voice and appearance and made a movie trailer-like piece with a message.
Feel free to go through the whole experience by the link below. When prompted with any input, you can just enter dummy letters.
Upon unlocking it, he sees this video, where we cloned his voice and appearance and made a movie trailer-like piece with a message.
Feel free to go through the whole experience by the link below. When prompted with any input, you can just enter dummy letters.
Spoiler to what happens next
1) He watches the video;
2) At the end there is a call to action to learn who are we;
3) Once clicked, there is a video from Oksana and Serge, after which Mark can reply with either text, audio or video;
4) Once replied, he thinks that's probably the end of the experience, but actually he gets redirected to a credits page, where we created several custom OST credits tracks to go along with the video.
As a bonus, we hope this approach sort of works as our extra portfolio, showing a broad range of stuff we can cook and execute on a rather shoestring budget and time scale. Imagine we'd had a budget?
After all, we'd just really love working with you.