The New Wave ~ The Digital Picnic
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 The Digital Picnic.
1. Give us the elevator pitch – who are you and what do you do?
We’re the industry’s best-kept secret. Female-founded, full-service, and in business since 2014 [before most of our competitors existed].
We started as a boutique agency specialising in social and paid ads (training was always our bread and butter). Today we’re a full-service independent digital agency working across every channel and every industry, and we still teach everything we offer as a service.
Big brief or small, we care about the work and the people behind it, and we’re built on long-term, values-aligned partnerships.
2. Are indies still challengers, or have they become the norm?
Norm, honestly. So the real question isn’t indie versus network anymore, it’s what you’ve actually built to back yourself once “independent” stops being the point of difference.
A lot of agencies have leaned on speed and access alone. That’s not enough anymore, AI’s levelled a lot of the tech playing field, so a smaller team moving fast isn’t the flex it used to be. What still can’t be copied is depth.
For us, depth means knowing exactly what we’re good at, and being genuinely willing to say no to the rest. It’s why the work stays bespoke instead of getting generalised into something that could belong to anyone.
That’s what staying indie means to us.
3. What’s your unfair advantage over the networks today?
Honestly? There’s a bit of an anti-agency mood going around right now, and some of it, unfortunately, is justified. There are a lot of cowboy agencies out there churning through clients, over-promising, then going quiet.
We’re not that. Never have been. We’ve been doing this for over a decade, and we’ve grown slowly and sustainably on purpose, not chasing every brief that lands in our inbox. We say no more than we say yes, if it’s not a genuine partnership that makes sense for both sides, we won’t take it on.
That’s the real advantage. While networks are managing churn, we’re deepening relationships, the same senior team on your account for years, not months. That’s not a nice-to-have. That’s our whole model.
4. How are you using AI to compete above your weight?
AI’s a tool for us, not a strategy. We don’t add it in just because everyone else is, we start with an actual pain point and build the tech from there.
Where it’s been most useful is the operational stuff, automating our sales process, lead handling, reporting, client onboarding, keeping the team updated with automations in Slack. That’s given us the output of a much bigger agency without the bigger headcount, the time it frees up goes straight back into the senior thinking clients are actually paying for.
But the real edge is literacy, not tools. We invest in AI training for our senior leaders first, so good judgement about when and how to use it trickles down through the whole team.
But when it comes to digital strategy and content, that’s got to stay human-first. That’s creative brainstorming, understanding a brand and its audience, the kind of thinking that comes from people, not prompts.
5. What kind of clients are choosing indies right now – and why?
Honestly, all kinds now, and that’s the real shift. It used to be mostly SMEs and startups looking for a more hands-on partner. Now we’re landing enterprise clients too, businesses that would’ve defaulted to a big agency a few years ago, choosing an indie instead.
We’re also seeing a lot more businesses coming to us because they want a partner who actually gets them, not just an agency executing a brief.
What they all have in common is wanting a real partnership, not just a transaction. That’s exactly what indies are built for.
6. What’s next – growth, staying lean, or something else?
Growth, but sustainable growth.
For us, growth means building a structure where our team can grow alongside the agency, not just adding services because we can. We’ve expanded into more of the digital marketing mix over the years, always slowly, always on purpose, because rushing it means the work suffers.
Staying independent and staying good at what we do, that’s where we always want to be.
Check out the other New Wave Q&As below:
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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