The New Wave ~ Swan Studio
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 Swan Studio.
1. Give us the elevator pitch – who are you and what do you do?
We’re Swan Studio, a social creative agency obsessed with results. We love being judged on that and our clients love it as much as we do.
We’re social end-to-end: covering paid and organic, with everything in-house. Our clients use social as a meaningful channel for driving business growth, and we tie our work to their objectives like they are our own.
We’re here to solve the brand’s problem as much as the audience’s. We go where people are, we speak their language, and we make the work part of their world. And we move at the speed of social.
2. Are indies still challengers, or have they become the norm?
Being a challenger is a mindset, not an ownership structure. You need to operate like one and build a culture around it. In an industry where challengers become the norm, things get more vibrant and exciting. We love being part of that.
For us, being a challenger is operating in uncharted territory. Social creative performance is only a decade old, and you don’t grow the way we have unless you were built for this world. There’s no playbook for what we’re doing, so we’re writing it as we go.
That’s why we build tech that doesn’t exist yet, hire for people without traditional backgrounds, and partner with clients as if we’re a genuine extension of their team.
3. What’s your unfair advantage over the networks today?
Proximity. To the client and to the audience.
Close to the client means we embed ourselves and operate like one team. The work we do is inherently measurable and we love that. There’s no hiding behind the results.
As soon as it’s put to market, we get the data, we learn, iterate and refine. That’s what puts us close to the audience and lets us understand them in real time.
The networks have the strategic rigour but not the native instinct and pace of the platforms. We won’t trade one for the other.
4. How are you using AI to compete above your weight?
Our stance on AI is simple. We use AI to empower our people to do what they do best: the thinking and the creative work.
Since AI became available, we’ve incorporated it into the operational side of the business. We started with LLMs, moved quickly into agentic workflows, tested AI in production across voice, image and video and then started creating our own software.
We’ve got a clear roadmap for software that will sit behind every single piece of work we do at the agency, making our work faster and better. AI is enabling the building of this software, and it also reaps the benefits once everything we do is living under one roof. That only multiplies the impact by reinforcing the faster and better we mentioned before.
5. What kind of clients are choosing indies right now – and why?
The clients coming to indies right now are any brand where social drives revenue.
For us that’s everyone from ambitious startups to household names like Hungry Jack’s, Canva, HelloFresh and Eucalyptus.
Social stopped being a brand channel and became a revenue one. Marketing teams need to deliver faster and at scale, with an increased demand for output, so they need a partner who can keep up and has the nerve to push the work somewhere they wouldn’t have gone on their own.
6. What’s next – growth, staying lean, or something else?
We intend for Swan Studio to be known globally as the best at our craft. So the answer is growth. We will keep building a world-class team and being the best partner our clients can have.
We’re also committed to leading the way in social creative and setting a new standard for what it takes for brands to deliver genuine business growth on the platforms.
Check out the other New Wave Q&As below:
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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