The New Wave ~ TABOO
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 TABOO.
1. Give us the elevator pitch – who are you and what do you do?
We’re TABOO. Clients come to us when they want the world, but don’t want to traverse a giant holding company to get to it.
For over 25 years, we’ve helped brands earn attention, build fame and drive growth through ideas people choose to spend time with. We’re a one-stop shop of sharp thinkers who left behind the layers, politics and processes that slow good ideas down.
Oh, and we’re a certified B Corp, which means we don’t shit on anyone or anything in the process.
2. Are indies still challengers, or have they become the norm?
It depends who you ask. Lots of our clients were ahead of their time. To them, we’re not only the norm, we’re the future. They realised they didn’t need to go to separate agencies to get a lead agency and an experiential agency and a social agency. They could get it all with us. More CMOs are looking around and wondering why they’ve had 15 different people work on their business in the past year, why nobody knows their brand properly, and why they’re paying a premium for the privilege. Then they come to us and they take a collective sigh of relief and wonder why the fuck they hadn’t done that sooner.
3. What’s your unfair advantage over the networks today?
In a word: people. While the networks are haemorrhaging their best talent, we’re attracting them. And when you’ve spent 25 years building a business around treating people properly, word gets around.
At TABOO, clients also get the advantage of direct access to these people. We don’t wheel anyone out ‘for show’. There’s a very real chance our MD will be personally working through your strat, our awarding winning ECD will be sweating over your headlines, or our Cannes-winning TV producer shooting your film. The people you meet in the pitch are the people who will be doing the work. No factory shifts here.
4. How are you using AI to compete above your weight?
We’ve spent years developing SOON, our proprietary strategic intelligence platform. It scans emerging signals, trends and shifts in culture, helping our clients understand what matters now and what will matter next.
We’re also constantly optimising our tech stack to make sure we’re driving efficiency in the right places. The irony is that the more useful AI becomes, the more valuable human creativity becomes. AI can analyse the world in seconds. It still struggles to make someone laugh, cry, care or fall in love with a brand. We use AI to do the heavy lifting so our people can spend more time creating the emotional responses that actually move brands forward.
5. What kind of clients are choosing indies right now – and why?
Savvy ones. Margins are shrinking, but ambitions aren’t. Value for money is everything. If you could get Couture-level creative, with the experiential capability of the Australian Open alongside a strategy that can build your brand for the next 10 years, and a Social team who know exactly how to spread all of that far and wide, all from a team who will roll up their sleeves with you, grow grey hairs with you, why would you choose to go to a factory instead?
6. What’s next – growth, staying lean, or something else?
TABOO turned 25 this year. Our plan has always been the same and it’s pretty simple. Our aim is to get paid what we’re worth, doing work that we love, with people we love hanging out with everyday. The rest has always had a way of taking care of itself.
Check out the other New Wave Q&As below:
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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