The New Wave ~ Wildlings
Wildlings today was featured on Campaign Brief Australia’s The New Wave series of agency profiles. The New Waveis 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 Wildlings.
1. Give us the elevator pitch – who are you and what do you do?
We’re not for everyone. Which, increasingly, feels like a point of difference.
Wildlings is owned and run by a strategist, two Creative Directors and an Account Director, backed by a 12-strong crew across strategy, creative, design, client service and production.
We push, pull and challenge each other. It creates a beautiful chaos, but that’s often where the magic lies.
We’re based in Perth, but geography isn’t really our constraint.
Client bravery and creative appetite are far more interesting limits.
2. Are indies still challengers, or have they become the norm?
Between us, we’ve worked across pretty much every version of the agency model, including some of the biggest national and international networks.
They were brilliant places to learn. We made big work, worked with big brands, won at Cannes, D&AD and most of the other shows agencies pretend not to care about.
So we’ve done the big-agency thing. And it taught us that the name above the door matters a lot less than the people around the table.
For us, independence means backing our judgement, challenging the comfortable answer and keeping the slightly dangerous idea alive long enough to see if it’s the good one.
Maybe indies are becoming the norm, but independent thinking still isn’t.
3. What’s your unfair advantage over the networks today?
Skin in the game.
Wildlings isn’t an outpost of somewhere bigger. The owners are here, the decisions are made here, and our reputation rides on every piece of work that leaves the building.
We understand WA intimately without believing our thinking has to stay here.
There’s no distant head office, no one further up the chain to defer to, and no hiding when the work isn’t good enough.
Local intimacy. Global standards. Personal accountability.
4. How are you using AI to compete above your weight?
D&AD President Lisa Smith captured it well, “As AI becomes more accessible, taste becomes more valuable.”
We’re operating at two opposite ends of the spectrum. AI is brilliant at the grunt work. Let the machines chew through research, synthesis, workflows and repetitive tasks so our people can focus on the important stuff: judgement, ideas and craft.
At the other end, it’s putting increasingly high-end production tools at our fingertips across film, sound and prototyping.
Meanwhile, particularly in Design, we’re leaning increasingly analogue: screen printing, letterpress, Risograph, fabrics, lightboxes and making things by hand.
Sometimes the most interesting work happens when the AI and analogue worlds collide.
5. What kind of clients are choosing indies right now – and why?
The good ones.
More seriously, the clients choosing indies want to matter. And chances are, they don’t want their brands sitting comfortably in the middle of blah either.
Why would you be the fourth, or tenth, consideration on a big agency’s roster when you can have experienced senior people genuinely in the trenches with you, probably losing a little sleep over your business too?
Clients want fewer layers, more candour and direct access to the people actually doing the thinking. They don’t necessarily want a smaller agency. They want to feel like a bigger client.
Our best clients expect us to challenge them and are prepared to challenge us back.
6. What’s next – growth, staying lean, or something else?
Bigger ambition, not necessarily a bigger org chart.
We want bigger problems, bigger opportunities and work that travels well beyond where it was made.
We’ll add people and capability when they make the work better, but scale for scale’s sake doesn’t interest us.
The sweet spot – if we can get there, is growing without losing the friction, closeness and accountability that makes Wildlings sing.
Check out the other New Wave Q&As on CB Australia below:
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