Global ECD Departs McCann to Open ‘Offshore’ Creative Studio: International Waters

After 19 years in global advertising networks – the last position being as global executive creative director at McCann Worldgroup – Ioana Filip is stepping away from her executive role to establish an independent creative studio, International Waters. The new venture introduces an innovative creative model called “chartered creativity.”

Ioana has been planning this path for years now. From afar, she was preparing for a global role. Inside, there was a fire burning. With an itch for the entrepreneurial side since she can remember, every move she has made in the past seven years has been leading to this moment, she thinks – from moving to Chicago to working on global businesses at BBDO and having an impact on the US market, to creatively running MRM out of London as CCO, before then taking a global role at McCann Worldgroup.

“I’ve had incredible opportunities for growth within the networks which I was always so grateful for, but I knew one day I would take the leap into entrepreneurship. This moment felt right,” she says. “Not because of any specific circumstance, but because it was the right time for me.

“It starts with where I'm coming from,” she goes on. As a Romanian, she started her career in Bucharest as a copywriter and then creative director, she soon felt the burden of working in a place considered ‘offshore’. “I've been hit with stereotypes, geographical and social bias, especially as I was leading teams across Europe as a Romanian. When I went to the [United] States, which was my first global role, I saw the opposite. People were very inclusive. They wanted to get the best out of what my life experience was. I met so many immigrants that were doing amazing stuff there that it made me realise that there's an alternative to sort of the bias that I felt.”

In a network, creatives end up working with teams from all over the world. Ioana would collaborate with “insanely good designers from Brazil, or production companies from Romania.” She noticed these geographies being described as ‘offshore’, despite being world-leading. So when she was branding her new studio, Ioana wanted to intentionally call it an offshore. “Because there's a bias to the word ‘offshore’ and I want to change it, so that next year when we go on stage in Cannes and we win as an offshore, we start to change the perception of what that is.”

International Waters challenges traditional notions of offshore creative work. The studio recognises that some of the world’s top creative talent and most recognised creative work originates from regions historically categorised as offshore like Romania, Brazil, India or Argentina and many more. The company’s vision is rooted in the belief that outdated geographical bias often stands in the way of creativity for global brands.

With the rise of remote collaboration, every creative in the world has equal access to the same knowledge, trends, and tools. Culture however is the defining factor that fuels disruption. And it’s the culture and sociopolitical context of many offshore countries that demand creative people to think disruptively in order to thrive. International Waters capitalises on this through “chartered creativity” – curating custom-built teams assembled per project, ensuring the perfect skillset match, whether for expertise or local relevance, from some of the most awarded global creatives in the world. Each project is overseen by a global core team with extensive international and global expertise, ensuring brand consistency across markets while delivering brave creative ideas from talent independently of where they sit in the world.

Simply put, “what I wanted to do in terms of the model is to connect global brands to global talent,” she says.

"Many of these creatives remain in their home countries. The notion that talent must relocate to thrive is outdated. We’re already seeing global CCOs based all over the world. While New York and London remain key HQ hubs, I don’t believe that’s the only path to success,” says Ioana.

International Waters is setting up its HQ in Bucharest and an operations hub in the United States with plans to establish presence in MENA by 2027. Global leadership will be spending time between markets. The agency’s structure is designed to offer cost efficiencies for clients while enabling them to access world-class creative talent without the logistical challenges of traditional networks. By operating in a decentralised model, International Waters eliminates hurdles such as cross-border contracting and time zone conflicts while maintaining the calibre of talent typically associated with major networks.

“My goal is not to create an agency that competes with networks. That idea always felt counterintuitive for an independent studio,” says the creative founder. “We’re targeting mid-sized clients with revenues between $20 million and $1 billion – brands that want to disrupt, that want to know their team and that expect to be treated with the level of attention big brands do. Both from a senior talent perspective and time. International Waters is focused on building new partnerships and embracing new opportunities in the evolving creative landscape. With no ego, no structures and no status quo.”

Ioana is keen to make sure that International Waters is very strategic about what clients it chooses to work with early on. “It's all going to be about doing the work so that we can prove the model,” she says. “I don't want to rush into just any client, any type of opportunity because I want to make sure that the work that we do has impact. Otherwise it's just some beautiful words we put in the press and not reality.”

What will that work look like? Ioana doesn't even want to predict it herself. “Every brief requires a different solution and a different type of channel. And I don't want to narrow the kind of work that we do. I think as long as it's the right creative solution for the business challenge we have, I don't care if it's a film or print or radio or an AI from scratch or a robot, I don't care. It can be anything.”

The company is in discussions for potential shareholding partnerships, with further announcements expected later this year. But expect them to follow the ethos Ioana is setting out for her new venture – a quote that she’d like to put on the wall one day: “no ego and no status quo.”