Humanaut: The Humanaut MotherBrain

Independent agency Humanaut has launched MotherBrain, a collaborative creative community that works remotely on assignments and serves as an extension of its in-house team. The creative training and recruitment platform is designed to discover the next generation of talent—without actually working together. It allows Humanaut to post projects, briefs, and educational videos to a growing community of hundreds of creatives and expand the talent pool beyond freelancers to reach creative folks outside the industry. Humanaut’s mission is to get good things inside people’s brains. Members of its remote team are compensated for most projects and can work with top talent from around the world. In a recruitment video, Founder/Chief Creative Officer David Littlejohn says he’s “not just looking for cocky creative professionals,” and suggests that everyone from students to stand-up comics, writers, actors, illustrators, designers, and “quirky moms with way too many ideas” sign up. “We want your brain inside the MotherBrain,” he says. The MotherBrain evolved out of Homemade, a year-old Humanaut project that arose out of the pandemic and quarantine. With employees working from home, Homemade was a way to maintain creativity and collaboration while workers were socially distant. Soon, Humanaut decided to invite other creatively minded people to join the project. So far, members have crowdsourced several assignments. They’ve created Instagram “Socialnuggets” for Dickel Tennessee Whisky, starred in ads for Crunchmaster chips, brainstormed questions for The LIV Project’s suicide-prevention game for teens, and crafted Human Service Announcements (PSAs) for Covid and other causes.