The Beyond Collective and Specialist Agencies Unite Under Single Brand, BEYOND

Independent group, The Beyond Collective, unifies specialist agencies Above+Beyond, Yonder Media, Frontier Strategy and Collective Studios under a single brand offering, Beyond, with a mission to set brands free.

Home to the brightest minds in creative, media and innovation, Beyond will create maximum advantage for brands, by freeing clients and teams from the restrictions of the industry’s capability siloes and cultures.

Zaid Al-Zaidy, co-founder and CEO of Beyond said, “The brand icons of tomorrow are being built differently to the established brands we know of today, and yet our sector’s traditional siloes remain very much alive, boxing-in great ideas, sucking the life out of teams and leaving the complex heavy-lifting of brand stewardship and growth to clients alone.

Our industry’s multistring of verticals is totally misaligned to the real world where audiences move in and out of customer journeys with the expectation, as a minimum, of a consistent joined-up brand experience.

With a constant eye on macro-economic and global uncertainty, agencies have become used to complaining about clients being too fixated on instant returns and not having enough budget. Clients are not spending less on marketing, it’s just that their investments are being lost under the weight of the modern marketing ecosystem.”

Powered by the beyond way, clients can work with Beyond to set brands free in three ways:

1. Live-briefs will be powered-up through seamless and bespoke multi-disciplinary team set-ups focused on engineering unfair advantage for brands for maximum near-term impact.

Clients will benefit from creative thinking that can inspire the entire marketing food chain, ideas that are more integrated and effective, and media thinking that is innovative and disruptive across an entire brand experience. Capabilities also include technology-led live experiences and a new virtual production offering.

2. Longer-term brand transformation projects take the form of upstream strategic marketing consultancy, to affect step-change growth from the inside and out. Projects will be led by a team of the very best, former senior marketing practitioners and strategists and include ai-technology design-and-adoption programmes led by Beyond’s head of technology, Kim Lawrie.

3. Beyond’s third access point is a new venture offering, which enables clients to re-calibrate and re-imagine their brands, pilot and then launch into new innovative spaces for new commercial and enterprise value.

Some of Beyond’s clients have already been part of a trial of the new company offering and experienced first-hand the benefits.

ALZHEIMER’S RESEARCH UK appointed the agency via open market pitch to its creative business in 2022 and has since awarded additional responsibilities across media and fundraising. United, the team has led the development of a new charity north star to rally the organisation and all marketing activity. The new momentum under the banner of #foracure has driven a 35% growth in income in only two years.

New wine disruptor, VINARCHY, has been working with Beyond on a strategic consultancy basis to bring together two marketing teams from Accolade Wines and Pernod Ricard Winemakers, under a single new marketing way to realise the company’s mission to reimagine the wine category. VINARCHY already works with Beyond’s strategy, media buying and planning experts on global and local campaigns for brands such as HARDY’S, JAM SHED and ECHO FALLS.

Tom Smith, marketing and category director, Vinarchy, said, “Established in 2025 with brands including Hardys, Jacob’s Creek and Campo Viejo, Vinarchy is a new global category leader with a mission to redefine wine.

This requires new thinking and for us to break free from the expected, to create genuine step change. We’ve been working with The Beyond Collective agencies for many years, across strategy, media and creative, shaking up what we do at an organisational level and across some of our brands including, Hardys, Jam Shed and Echo Falls. The creation of Beyond, with its mission to set brands free, will only supercharge our ambitions further and is perfectly timed with the launch of Vinarchy.”

Nic Ost, co-founder, commercial strategy and Ventures, said, “By building unified teams of experts, and creating new technology platforms, Beyond will enable clients to remove operational frictions and wastage – making things simpler and more efficient, and ensuring investments create value where they matter most.”

Beyond's new leadership team has been central to the development of the new offering and includes: Jonny Ray, formerly managing director of Above+Beyond, who takes on the role of partner, client growth and innovation; Ed Cox, co-founder and managing director of Yonder Media, becomes partner, media, data and effectiveness; Joseph Bruce, formerly ECD of Above+Beyond, becomes creative partner; Kim Lawrie remains head of technology; Laura Graham remains head of production; and Emily Paterson, head of planning at Yonder Media, takes on the role of head of experience planning.

This is a bold move for a collective that has successfully built four agencies, each with its own set of expert capabilities and portfolio of clients, including well-known brands such as Avon, Amazon, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Boots, Depop, Itsu, Mulberry, Netflix, No7, OXO, Shelter, Subway and Vinarchy. Together, they have won multiple awards, across multiple categories, such as D&AD pencils, a Media Week Gold and the IPA’s Effectiveness Accreditation, which recognises the company’s commitment to driving commercial outcomes for clients through media.

To accompany the company’s launch, Beyond is also promoting itself locally, in Borough, through a selection of digital out-of-home screens. Joe Bruce, creative partner of Beyond said, “The whole team is really proud of what we’ve created together, so we wanted to launch our new name, look and mission statement in style. And in a way that only a media, creative and innovation company could. Not just on tote bags and emails, but on massive billboards and screens for everyone that works here and our clients to see.”

Zaid Al-Zaidy, co-founder and CEO of Beyond said, “We have spent nearly a decade building credible and award-winning capabilities across strategy, media, creative and production. Today, under the banner of Beyond, we can now set brands free by choreographing single multi-disciplined teams to deliver greater value for our clients, simplify and speed-up ways of working, maximise what’s possible and unlock new levels of creativity, innovation and effectiveness for our clients across their entire marketing supply chain.”