The New Wave ~ The Many Australia
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 Damien Eley, CEO, The Many Australia.
1. Give us the elevator pitch – who are you and what do you do?
We’re The Many Australia.
At the simplest level, we’re a creative company.
At a more useful level, we’re a company built around participation.
Our belief is that persuasion is becoming increasingly automated, which means the businesses that win will be the ones creating things people actively choose to engage with, experience and belong to.
That can look like campaigns. Content. Entertainment. Media. Activations. Immersive experiences. New products.
We’re less interested in format than in creating genuine participation.
2. Are indies still challengers, or have they become the norm?
I think the definition of ‘challenger’ has changed.
For a long time, indies were positioned as the scrappy alternative to the big networks. Faster, hungrier, more founder-led.
Some still are.
But increasingly, I think clients are less interested in ownership structure and more interested in capability, agility and whether the people pitching are the people actually doing the work.
The bigger shift is that the traditional network model was built for a different era. Different economics, different workflows, different client needs.
So I’m not sure indies are challengers anymore.
In many cases, they’re simply better aligned to how modern businesses want to work.
3. What’s your unfair advantage over the networks today?
Participation.
And I mean a genuinely developed strategic doctrine.
We’ve spent over a decade building around the idea that the future belongs to businesses that create participation, not just communications.
That belief has shaped our company, our work, our IP and our investment decisions.
We trademarked ourselves as The Participation Company™.
We’ve published books on it.
We’re making acquisition decisions through that lens.
We invested in immersive technology because immersive is one of the most literal forms of participation.
Sooo, that’s our unfair advantage.
Most agencies can tell you what they do, but I really very strongly believes that far fewer can clearly articulate what they believe, why they believe it, and how that belief changes the work.
That kind of clarity becomes incredibly useful when the industry is being reshaped in real time.
4. How are you using AI to compete above your weight?
We’re probably doing it similarly to the way a lot of people are doing it.
But also, AI has become just part of who we are. We are developing our own internal products. We are developing our own external products.
It forces us to ask ourselves constantly, what entirely new things become possible?
New products.
New audience experiences.
New creative workflows.
New business models.
I don’t think that AI should just make the old machine cheaper.
It’s definitely helping us become something we never could have been before
5. What kind of clients are choosing indies right now — and why?
I presume it’s one of three types.
Clients who want senior attention and are tired of being handed down the chain.
Clients who need speed and adaptability because their business is moving faster than traditional processes allow.
And clients who genuinely want different thinking, not just a cheaper version of the same model.
The common thread that we certainly see is that they usually have an appetite for change.
6. What’s next — growth, staying lean, or something else?
We’re just really focused on being relevant.
I have very little interest in building a bigger version of an old or even existing model.
The opportunity is to build one for what’s next.
I think we all know that the most interesting agencies of the next decade probably won’t look much like agencies at all.
Check out the other New Wave Q&As below:
Read Bureau of Everything’s Q&A here
Read Art of the Possible ANZ’s Q&A here
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