5 Minutes with… Sam Brown

Sam> Thank you very much! I have been in account management for 16 years, and I have had the pleasure of running our wonderful department since 2020. I returned to work after maternity leave with a refreshed perspective, and being a step removed from both the workload and the emotions of the day-to-day gave me the headspace to think more broadly about the company. I thrived in creating and implementing company initiatives that unlock new opportunities and tackle the challenges we were facing. This big-picture thinking was energising, and I wanted to spend more time focusing on it. Wonderhood didn’t have a managing director, so with the support of our founder and CEO, Alex Best, we outlined how our roles and responsibilities would differ, with Alex leaning more towards new business and me towards running the day-to-day. And now here I am—Wonderhood’s first managing director, ready to supercharge us for our next chapter.

Sam> We partnered with Three to help them ‘come of age’. Since launching in 2003, they had been a perennial youthful challenger in the UK mobile market. They flouted established marketing conventions, historically-taking bold risks to pursue growth with disruptive propositions and advertising. However, after 18 years of growth, they began to stall in an increasingly-crowded, commoditised market. This called for a change of formula.

Three had been caught in the modern marketing trend of pursuing younger demographics and all things ‘youth’, often at the expense of targeting broader and more affluent audiences. It was time to finally grow up and realise the larger market opportunity. So, we deployed a mature marketing approach to navigate ‘adulthood’ in an industry in flux. We did this without losing the magic that had helped Three stand out in the past—a razor-sharp understanding of how people truly connect through their network.

We created a new visual identity and platform, ‘Life Needs a Big Network,’ which provided a North Star for the business and its agency partners. This enormous undertaking has seen Three reach record levels of brand consideration and delivered a 4.7:1 return on media investment across all marketing efforts since July 2021. It also generated an incremental revenue uplift of £189 million, surpassing historic performance.

This success was built on solid strategic foundations and an open, honest partnership with our marketing director, Aislinn O’Connor, and her team. We work collaboratively with the marketing team, the in-house agency, and partner agencies. Three trusted Wonderhood with their business early on in our journey, and their success has been our success. Often, agencies want to start fresh each year, but we held our nerve to do ‘the right thing,’ which was a slow and steady process. It’s paid off, and we’re proud to be shortlisted for this year’s IPA Effectiveness Awards. 

Sam> We had a set of values for our Advertising Studio, but earlier this year, I led the charge to develop a new vision and set of values that work across all our studios, as we are collaborating more than ever. Everything we do is underpinned by our values: Build, Push, and Care.

We build; we don’t break. We see ourselves and our brand partners as a team of builders who work together to provide constructive feedback, so that we can build work together.

We push each other to continuously improve — both ourselves and our offerings — to break category norms and boundaries and to maintain the energy and momentum to ‘make it happen’, which is our agency theme for 2024.

We take care of ourselves, each other, our brand, and our production partners, all while being mindful of the local community and the environment.

I will ensure that we live and breathe these values because we believe they are the foundation for creating a positive and productive environment where creativity can thrive.

Sam> We are immensely proud of our company culture, which has led to our recognition in both Campaign and Broadcast’s ‘Best Places to Work.’ Our churn rate is just 7%, making it the fourth lowest in Campaign’s School Report. We have successfully grown from a small company to one with 68 permanent employees. My short-term goal is to push us to achieve our ambitious growth targets and supercharge our creative excellence while protecting our special culture. I’m confident we can achieve this by being tougher on the work while still being respectful of each other.

My long-term goal is to continue innovating in the branded entertainment space so that we become the leading voice with a breadth of effective and award-winning case studies for our brand partners. These projects typically take at least a year from development to delivery. We already have a few exciting projects in the pipeline, but I’d like to establish a steady stream of them by partnering with brands eager to create deeper connections with their audiences.

Sam> We spend so much time being laser-focused on delivering for our brand partners that we sometimes forget Wonderhood is a brand too. We have a lot to shout about and great ideas to share, so I’d like us to be more proactive in sharing what we’re up to and actively contribute more to industry developments and conversations.

I’ve had a few coffees with MDs from other independent agencies, and even though we are competitors, I appreciate how the indie community supports each other and works together to drive positive change in the industry. I’d love to further fuel this collaborative spirit in my new role.

Sam> I am incredibly passionate about our innovative business model. As soon as I read founder and group CEO, David Abraham’s article back in 2018 announcing the unique structure of having two studios—a full-service advertising studio and a television studio producing programming for broadcasters and streamers — working adjacent to each other, it sounded intriguing and like something I wanted to be a part of. Since then, we’ve launched three more studios: Data, Design, and Makers (for social).

As a collective of studios, we provoke wonder through a neighbourhood of curious minds, developing original ideas that create cultural visibility for brands, platforms, and broadcasters. We’re fortunate to have the in-house expertise to craft storytelling that intercepts, interrupts, and disrupts culture.

Our business model’s ‘sweet spot’ is when the studios collaborate, and two of my favourite projects have involved working with founder and chief creative officer, Sam Anstiss’ team in the Television Studio. They created the outstanding series ‘Baby Surgeons: Delivering Miracles’, and the Advertising Studio was brought onboard to amplify the series. This collaboration involved partnering with the UK’s largest pregnancy and baby loss charity, Tommy’s and Channel 4 to create a pioneering ‘Pregnancy Loss Policy,’ which was launched by Channel 4 and Wonderhood and made available for other companies to implement. I also worked on the BAFTA-nominated Channel 4 series ‘Super Surgeons: A Chance at Life’, a branded entertainment partnership with Macmillan Cancer Support. The series was Channel 4’s third best-performing 10pm show of the year and resulted in Macmillan being the most talked-about charity and the fourth most talked-about brand in the UK. It was so successful that a second series aired last month, and the results are looking very positive again.

We’re not resting on our laurels; we’re bringing a Wonderhood take on CX and brand strategy to the market this autumn. My focus will be on fine-tuning our offerings and operations to unite our experts in collaborating on innovative storytelling that creates cultural visibility.

Sam> We have created premium branded entertainment by partnering with brands such as Macmillan Cancer Support, My Heritage, and Waitrose & Partners. In my new role, I’m looking to spend more time in the premium branded entertainment space. 

It plays an integral role in adding value to an integrated comms approach for brands. For instance, if you have a £10m media budget you could spend it all on buying more reach or frequency for your campaign, or you could take 10% of the budget and put it towards innovative storytelling to intercept your audience and connect with them on a much deeper level. With ‘Super Surgeons: A Chance at Life’, we created seven one-hour episodes which seamlessly incorporates Macmillan Cancer Support into the narrative, and to amplify the series we ran sponsorship idents, ads (brand and DR) in the ad breaks and a supporting social campaign. 

We have traditionally created premium branded entertainment in partnership with broadcasters, and I’m excited to continue to push to create award-winning storytelling in this space, whilst broadening our offering to partner with platforms. 

AI-driven personalisation at scale seems like a useful tool for creating targeted communications, but it doesn’t deliver on cultural visibility — a key metric by which we judge our work—so I’ve set that trend aside for now. 

Sam> Our range of studio offerings helps us to attract and retain top talent—experts in their own disciplines who are also eager to upskill across multiple areas. I will ensure that everyone has the opportunity to benefit from our unique structure and expand their skillsets by collaborating across our studios. This involves creating an environment and processes that fuel cross-studio collaboration.

We have wonderful brand partners who we love working with to transform their businesses. Transforming their businesses also means transforming our own, so I want to ensure we remain their integral business partner and avoid falling into the service provider category. I’ll also be exploring what’s next in terms of disciplines, geography, and more.

I'm excited to deploy my energetic disposition to make our wonderful machine work even better, drive growth, and supercharge our innovative storytelling—bring it on!