The New Wave ~ cummins&partners
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 cummins&partners.
1. Give us the elevator pitch. Who are you and what do you do?
cummins&partners is an independent creative company with 30 strong years of ground breaking work. Best job in the World. Stop the Horror. I bought a Jeep. Campaigns studied in university courses today.
We were one of the first agencies to re-integrate creative and media because we believed brands needed one story, not fragments of one. We work across strategy, creativity, media and execution to help brands move with clarity and impact. We tell the whole story.
2. Are indies still challengers, or have they become the norm?
The real difference is not indie versus network. It is ownership.
Owners care differently. They are closer to the work, closer to the clients and closer to the consequences. When we started cummins&partners, we didn’t define ourselves against other independents. We set ourselves against the biggest agencies in the world and built the capability to compete with them.
There are many new independents now, which is healthy. But starting an agency is not the same as building one. The real test is time, resilience, scale and the ability to keep producing great work while running a sustainable business.
3. What’s your unfair advantage over the networks today?
We have the reach clients expect from a network, with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, New York, London and Dubai.
But the real advantage is access. Our senior leaders are involved in the work and in the client relationships. They are not removed from the business by layers of management or global reporting structures. Clients get experienced people who can make decisions, solve problems and move quickly.
4. How are you using AI to compete above your weight?
We use AI across almost everything we do, but with judgement. In fact we wrote a much different response to these questions , calling ourselves probably the most experienced credentialled and awarded agency, independent or otherwise today. But we ran the whole thing through Chat GPT and it suggested we take it out. “Too spiky” it said.
It is a powerful tool for speed, exploration, iteration and efficiency. But it does not replace taste, strategy, instinct or original thinking. Like fire, it is a good servant and a bad master.
5. What kind of clients are choosing indies right now, and why?
All kinds. We work with multinational businesses, challenger brands and founder-led companies.
What clients really want is relevant experience, senior thinking and momentum. Category knowledge matters. We launched Virgin Australia and we also launched Emirates in this market. Very different brands, but deep experience in the same category.
Some clients will always be attracted to what is newest or loudest. But the better clients are looking for substance: people who understand their business, know how to build brands, and can deliver consistently.
6. What’s next: growth, staying lean, or something else?
Anyone can start up. The harder thing is scaling up.
Growth for us is not simply about headcount. We have had hundreds of people on staff over the years, and size alone is not proof of capability. The aim is to be the right size: senior enough, broad enough and agile enough to do great work, while staying profitable and paying people well.
That is the business we want to keep building.
Check out the other New Wave Q&As below:
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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