The New Wave ~ Paper + Spark
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 Zeina Khodr, Managing Director / Chief Spark, Paper + Spark.
Give us the elevator pitch – who are you and what do you do?
We’re Paper + Spark, a full-service, full-funnel marketing and communications agency. We spark ideas that ignite brands, solving business challenges and communications problems with insights and design-led creativity that drives action.
Our niche is complex and highly regulated industries such as healthcare, financial services, energy, technology and not-for-profits.
We’re probably at our best when the problem doesn’t fit neatly into one box, because that lets us bring the right disciplines together around the challenge.
Are indies still challengers, or have they become the norm?
Indies have become part of the norm, but the good ones should still behave like challengers. Clients are clearly comfortable trusting independent agencies with major brands, long-term relationships and significant business problems.
What independence still gives us is the freedom to question how the agency should work, be entrepreneurial in our thinking, create a culture that drives passion and be agile in responding to client needs. We can grow without having to become something we never wanted to be.
What’s your unfair advantage over the networks today?
We go deep into complex verticals and have dedicated senior people who intimately understand healthcare, financial services, renewable energy and tech. They stay close to the work, and we build the team around the problem. The people shaping the strategy are still there when decisions are being made and the work is being delivered. Around that senior core, we can adapt the team to the brief.
That might mean strategists working alongside creatives and media specialists, or bringing in our healthtech team, behavioural specialist or technologist.
We’ve become very good at starting with the problem and building the right team around it, instead of asking the problem to fit an agency structure.
How are you using AI to compete above your weight?
We’re using AI throughout the way we work, from capturing briefs and interrogating research to developing ideas, creating prototypes and taking some of the administration out of delivery.
For a national agency with a team in the UK, that gives us considerable leverage. It means we can explore more, test things earlier and give our people more time for the bits that still need human judgement, creativity and experience.
We’re also building AI into client solutions, including agentic applications in healthcare. Because we work in regulated sectors, we’re probably more cautious than some about where AI should and shouldn’t be used. The test for us is simple: does it help us do better work for the client?
What kind of clients are choosing indies right now – and why?
All kinds, which is probably the interesting part. We’re working with consumer brands and blue-chip organisations across healthcare, energy, financial services, government. What we’re seeing is clients bringing us in earlier and trusting us with broader briefs with more sophisticated thinking across full-service and full-funnel..
Relationships that might start with a single project often expand because the client wants the same senior team helping with the next problem too. Clients choose good indies because they get continuity, direct access to the people doing the thinking and a team that can change shape as the challenge changes.
What’s next – growth, staying lean, or something else?
Evolution. We don’t think growing and staying lean are mutually exclusive. We’ve achieved eight consecutive years of double-digit growth, but we’re more interested in growing without losing the kind of agency we want to be.
Paper + Spark today is already very different from the agency we founded in 2018 because our clients have asked us to solve broader global problems, and that has taken us into areas such as customer experience, media, healthtech, organisational change and AI.
We expect that evolution to continue. The aim is to keep building capability, deepen our client relationships and grow the impact of the work while protecting the senior access, flexibility and culture that got us here.
Check out the other New Wave Q&As below:
Read The Fuel Agency’s Q&A here
Read Rethink Everything’s Q&A here
Read Agency Named Desire’s Q&A here
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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