ONE SIDE PROJECT TO RULE THEM ALL.

What do you do when you run out of ideas for new side projects? You create a side project that aggregates and rewards other side projects. A simple idea thrown out during a phone conversation with one person grew to a 14 person team, a crap ton of social media likes and an outpouring of support from the advertising community.

AdWeek (Launch)

AdWeek (Recap)

AdWeek (2020 Lookback)

Quick Stats

110

Amazing Judges

$10k+

Prize Money Given

800+

Total Entries

1

Month from Concept to Launch

30+

Live Events

Prize Per Category

$0

Paid Media

Origin

My co-founder, Sunita Deshpande, and I came up with the idea at the very end of July. 2020. Over the course of a month we planned out the entire contest, grew our team to 14 people, booked 61 judges, 15 programs for Creative Week, built a website and oversaw mountains of social content.

We joke that if we'd known how much work it would be when we had the idea, we may not have done it, but naivety has it's benefits. Instead of worrying about the mountain we were about to climb we were able to focus 100 ft at a time which is way more managable.

Website

After the first two years of The Side Show, we decided to change formats to be more of a gallery. This required rebuilding the entire site from the ground up. We brought on Serra Semi to help us redesign the site with an eye towards how we could grow our offerings.

You can view the full site here.

Media

As we were launching, we were presented with an opportunity. Advertising News website AgencySpy wanted to partner up. They created a new section on their site dedicated to Side Hustles and used entries into our contest to source their content.

Credits