The New Wave ~ Connecting Plots Group
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 Dave Jansen, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Connecting Plots Group.
1. Give us the elevator pitch – who are you and what do you do?
We build brands and businesses for the omnichannel world. As our name suggests, we craft and connect the plots that shape how brands are felt and seen.
2. Are indies still challengers, or have they become the norm?
Indies might be more established, but we think the challenger mentality still matters.
The advantage of independence isn’t simply being smaller. It’s being able to question the assumptions the industry has accumulated over decades: how agencies are structured, how clients pay for them, how ideas get made and even what an agency should be responsible for.
So perhaps indies aren’t challenging the establishment anymore. The best ones are challenging established thinking. And that’s a much more interesting role.
3. What’s your unfair advantage over the networks today?
Our ability to connect things without having to navigate a network to do it. We have strategy, creative, production and media under one roof.
Connecting Plots was founded by three partners, all of whom have never set foot inside a traditional advertising agency. True story. Our business is purpose-built without the biases of traditional ad-agency models that favour legacy approaches to these very modern problems.
4. How are you using AI to compete above your weight?
Size used to be the advantage. Now it’s a hindrance. We use AI throughout our workflow as an accelerator but not a substitute for human judgement.
It helps us interrogate briefs and datasets, accelerate research and synthesis, stress-test strategies and creative ideas, explore messaging and visual territories, and identify risks earlier.
In development and production, AI enables faster first drafts, copy and content variations, conceptual visualisation, storyboarding and, where appropriate, generative production across static and motion.
For high-volume activity, we can also develop client-specific AI workflows trained around established brand guidelines, tone of voice, previous work and messaging frameworks, enabling greater consistency and faster adaptation at scale.
5. What kind of clients are choosing indies right now – and why?
We hope that most clients see ‘indie’ as an advantage these days.
Today is a complex balancing act between business objectives, creativity and channels vs. budget, time and output. With consumers becoming harder to reach, marketers require smarter solutions across more channels, making their investment work harder than ever before.
Lean, experienced indie models can deliver on this quicker and more effectively than flabby, cumbersome networks.
There will still be large or multinational companies that’ll choose the network because it’s a safer bet. But they’re not the clients for us.
6. What’s next – growth, staying lean, or something else?
Staying lean and fast-moving.
We want to stay adaptive to what’s actually happening in the market. That means getting closer to the results and outcomes and bringing creativity, channel and media thinking closer and closer together.
Check out the other New Wave Q&As below:
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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