The New Wave ~ Agency Named Desire
The New Wave is Campaign Brief’s Q&A series spotlighting the next generation of independent creative companies and exploring how the indie model is evolving. From structure and speed to culture and capability, we unpack where these businesses are finding their edge and what’s driving client decisions today. Next up is Agency Named Desire.
1. Give us the elevator pitch – who are you and what do you do?
I am James Bartold (far right), or JB, and I’m Managing Director and one of 3 Founders of Agency Named Desire alongside Marnie McManus (centre) and Grant Rose (left). We’re an indie agency that specialises in partnerships across sports, entertainment, and culture. What does that really mean? We help brands solve problems; predominantly with their sponsorships, brand partnerships, or ambassador relationships. We help them strategise, plan and much of the time decide if its the right space to achieve their marketing and business goals.
2. Are indies still challengers, or have they become the norm?
Sure there’s more of us, but we’re definitely still challengers. There’ll always be a need for big agencies just as I believe there’s always a need for smaller, agile agencies to disrupt them. We personally didn’t create ours to per se “challenge the big agencies”, we created it to give brands an option for something different, and catered to a specific business need. We still often work beside the big agencies because our belief is the client should pick whoever is best for the task at hand.
3. What’s your unfair advantage over the networks today?
We’re nimble, crafted and results led. Smaller agencies can’t afford to not deliver at the highest level for their clients on every brief, every pitch, every solution. Our clients know two things: they’ll get our brains and we’ll work our butts off for them. Plus they also know they can call the founders of the business whenever they want. We will always have a direct line to our clients, so we can have direct feedback and maintain quality.
4. How are you using AI to compete above your weight?
We’re still interrogating the best use of AI for our business and our clients. In my opinion this is like much of the industry. Most of the use in our agency is process driven, we have less people, so we need to be efficient. We protect creative thinking and personalisation but are learning to empower automation of tasks that improve productiveness. The beauty in our business still sits in our unique knowledge base of the real market, from real life conversations, something that we don’t believe AI can deliver to our clients on its own.
5. What kind of clients are choosing indies right now – and why?
I honestly think all clients are open to Indies pending the project. Long gone are the days where you purely went to an agency because of its scale. We see our clients wanting ideas, they’re wanting different thinking, they’re wanting smarter commercial decision-making. For me, that means any brand could pick an indie, because there’s some bloody smart people working in them.
6. What’s next – growth, staying lean, or something else?
Without sounding awfully cliched, Por qué no los dos? We are going to grow, but we’re maintaining our values and promises to our clients. We want to bring on team members who buy into this vision and with almost 6 months in the business, we’ve learnt a lot about what we want to be and what we don’t. At the same time, we would be an indie if there wasn’t some mystery there of the ‘something else’, which I’m just going to leave at ‘ongoing commercial innovation’. We’ve got some bloody great ideas to test.
Check out the other New Wave Q&As below:
Read The Digital Picnic’s Q&A here
Read Paper Stone Scissors’ Q&A here
Read Curious Nation’s Q&A here
Read cummins&partners’ Q&A here
Read Connecting Plots Group’s Q&A here
Read Jacko Jacko & Jacko’s Q&A here
Read Chimera Project’s Q&A here
Read Today The Brave’s Q&A here
Read Tightknit Studio’s Q&A here
Read Bastion Australia’s Q&A here
Read We Are Different’s Q&A here
Read SICKDOGWOLFMAN’s Q&A here
Read Kill Boring Dead’s Q&A here
Read Oblong Creative’s Q&A here
Read The Many Australia’s Q&A here
Read Bureau of Everything’s Q&A here
Read Art of the Possible ANZ’s Q&A here
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1 Comment
Great team 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻