The New Wave ~ Berlin
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 Berlin.
1. Give us the elevator pitch – who are you and what do you do?
Berlin is an agency in the public interest. That’s the one floor elevator pitch.
We create behaviour change, advocacy, and brand building that moves society and the environment forward. For example, in our traffic meeting this week we discussed resourcing current projects with Cancer Council, The Australia Institute, Minderoo Foundation, Murdoch University and Conservation Council WA.
The clearest sign of who we are is who we won’t work for. No alcohol, fast food, tobacco, gambling or fossil fuels.
We’re built as a social enterprise hybrid, which means at least 20% of our time and profits goes to pro-social and pro-environmental campaigns that couldn’t otherwise afford us. So, the stronger we get, the stronger we can make our community.
2. Are indies still challengers, or have they become the norm?
Clients following the talent is the norm. And the talent migration is several years deep now. What’s more interesting is what independence is for.
We didn’t believe the world needed another ad agency when we, well, started another ad agency. But we do believe deeply in the power of creativity to shape a healthier future for ourselves, and our planet. Independence meant we could fully commit ourselves to this principle, and low and behold… the agency is working.
Once you’ve decided you’ll never take money from fossil fuels, you can go after Big Gas. Once you’ve said no to alcohol and fast food for good, you can say what you actually think about them. There’s no holdco to embarrass or adjacent account to lose.
We’re not a challenger to the agency down the road. We’re a challenger to the people whose products they’re advertising.
So yes, indies are the norm. The question we’d rather be asked is whether anything we make challenges stuff we want out of all of our lives.
3. What’s your unfair advantage over the networks today?
Playfulness, in categories where nobody expects it.
Being playful is easy when you’re selling snacks. It’s harder in ours. Health harms. Conservation. Economic policy. Subjects that default to gravity, because gravity feels appropriate and nobody ever got in trouble for the safe bet. But our motto is ‘playful is powerful’, because the audience stopped listening to the serious version years ago.
The networks know this. Their people have the same ideas we do. What they don’t have is time. A public health campaign typically runs through a client committee, a government department, a legal review and four internal layers before anyone sees it. At every one of those gates, somebody has a reason to pick the safer execution. The audacious version doesn’t get rejected. It gets whittled down.
Getting it through takes patience. Sitting with every stakeholder and walking them through the thinking until they can see that that audacious solution is actually the safest one. It’s the least glamorous work an agency does, and it’s where most of the best ideas die, because in a big agency nobody senior has the hours and it gets handed down.
We have the hours. It’s why we’ve done some of our best work inside the most complicated stakeholder networks and agency villages. And it’s how we get to the playful work that can light up a lost cause.
4. How are you using AI to compete above your weight?
We use it for the boring stuff. Desk research, transcription, first-pass synthesis of the stakeholder documents that come with our work… and there are plenty of those.
Past that, not much. Most of our work is finding a new way into a subject the audience has been lectured about for thirty years. We’ve tried asking AI… but it just gives you the thirty years back.
5. What kind of clients are choosing indies right now – and why?
Honestly, there isn’t much of a type anymore.
Size stopped being the qualifier a while ago. The industry is full of brilliant people working for themselves now, and if you’ve been at this long enough you know exactly who they are. You’ve worked with them, you’ve seen how they handle a difficult brief. When we need to scale or bring in a specialist, we’re not hiring a stranger off a list. We’re calling someone we’d vouch for.
What you can’t assemble that way is a point of view, and the freedom to hold it.
That’s the bit that tends to bring clients to us. Cancer Council, FARE, The Good Grocer, The Mental Health Commission, The Australia Institute, Minderoo, Murdoch University. None of them came to us because we’re small. They came because we don’t hedge. When it matters, that turns out to be the whole thing.
6. What’s next – growth, staying lean, or something else?
We’re aiming at bigger problems, not a bigger office.
We want to be involved in the biggest issues. Domestic and family violence. Fossil fuels. Multiculturalism. The health of our democracy. And the advocacy work that comes with those, like the campaign to protect WA’s Northern Jarrah Forests, or the long argument about generational inequity that nobody’s winning yet.
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
VIEW THE PRINT MAGAZINE + PAST ISSUES ONLINE. SUBSCRIBE NOW.
Register for FREE HERE and receive the Campaign Brief Daily Bulletin and/or the global Best Ads Best of the Week Bulletin. Subscribe to Campaign Brief Magazine.
#More Creative News #No paywalls #No annual membership fees
Subscribe to Portfolio & Reel for current listings of Australian and NZ ad agency and production company leadership and key personnel