Newfangled Studios, a fully-remote, woman-and-LGBTQIA+-owned creative production agency, has been recognised as one of Adweek’s 2023 Fastest Growing Agencies, an annual distinction awarded to 100 global agencies of all sizes that have achieved significant growth in 2020-2022. Despite a time of deep uncertainty and change, the agency reported a 152% growth rate, while nearly doubling in size.
Specialising in social-first, platform-specific digital ads, Newfangled has made waves with campaigns for The Google App, Google Pixel, Bank of America and Staples in the span of the past year, all as a collaborative partner despite not being any of the brands’ agency of record. It’s a business model that works for the agency as well as its clients.
“We have always prided ourselves on being nimble and proactive,” said Macaela VanderMost, founder and ECD of Newfangled, “But the past few years made those traits even more valuable. That’s what allowed us to expand our existing relationships by taking on bigger and bigger projects with our top clients at a time when a lot of groups were forced to scale back.”
The agency ranked 54th overall in terms of growth, and 11th within agencies centered in the Northeast. It was also the 15th fastest growing agency of its size within the 21-50 employees range.
While Newfangled Studios had been growing prior to the pandemic-fueled need to go remote, the decision to stay a distributed team has played a role in the agency’s momentum as well.
“We were Boston-based for nearly a decade,” recalls VanderMost, “And while that local community helped us get our footing and carve out a niche early on, going remote showed us that we could bring in new teammates and talents we didn’t have readily available nearby. We could recruit and hire for fit, instead of geography, and it simply made us better, and bigger along the way.”
Newfangled Studios’ social expertise also led to a year-long engagement with Google’s Team Adrenaline to help define and progress best practices and creative approaches across social channels for Google brands. Coupled with the agency’s live-action production chops and deep roster of top designers, animators, writers and editors, the team is looking forward to putting those learnings to work for all their clients, existing and new in 2024.