Strengthening Wellcom for a New Age of Advertising
Wellcom originated in Australia over 20 years ago, since then having built an enormous legacy as one of the leading production companies in the world.
While famous for production, the last few years have seen them build out their legacy to reflect the current changing climate of the advertising industry. Through strengthening partnerships, strategic offerings, creativity and more, Wellcom has become a one stop creative shop through complementary offerings Dippin’ Sauce and thelab. Combining digital, production and creativity offerings under one well loved brand.
General manager, Marnie Darren, creative director, Oliver Hammerton and APAC CEO, Andy Lumsden have worked diligently to honour the company's impressive legacy while exploring the new. Exploring the worlds of Stanley, UNLOAN, Freedom, Mission through creative advertising, Wellcom has become known as one of Australia’s leading creative agencies.
While Wellcom Worldwide continues to impress around the globe. They’ve turned restaurants into stadiums for Raising Cane’s in the USA, using AI as a tool to enhance production automation. In the UK, Wellcom combined two beloved brands, Ben & Jerry’s and Tony's Chocolonely to create a cohesive identity without losing their individuality.
LBB’s Casey Martin spoke to Wellcom’s global CEO, David Bridges on the changes that the business is facing and how these changes will close the gap between creativity and production.
LBB> Wellcom houses an impressive legacy as one of the top creative production houses in the world. What’s the back story, and how have you managed to maintain this level of global success over so many years?
David> At Wellcom we are always thinking about what's next to anticipate the industry trends and market opportunities to strengthen our offering in support of our clients. Whether through acquisition, strategic partnerships, or hiring the best talent in the industry we're constantly looking to improve and offer clients a more seamless and productive experience. The original Wellcom business started over twenty years ago in Australia. Over the years Wellcom acquired Keens in London (now Wellcom UK), thelab, and Dippin’ Sauce in the US and have since opened many Wellcom, thelab, and Dippin’ Sauce offices all over the world.
Also, having a really flat management team structure allows us to make decisions quickly, maintain our entrepreneurial spirit, and be more nimble than our competitors. While most global production agencies are focusing on super high volume/low-cost production, we’re investing in talent. Across our global teams, we have invested in top industry talent in CGI, animation, design, copy, art and creative direction, analytics, account and project management, research etc. We have our own wholly-owned offshore teams in India and Kuala Lumpur but we strongly believe that quality, creativity, and service will be the drivers of our success.
LBB> The market is changing at an unprecedented pace globally with the introduction of new technology, shifting social patterns, and consumer behaviour. How do you see our industry changing to reflect these changes, and what opportunities will these adjustments bring?
David> We see more consolidation coming. There has been a trend of major holding companies either repurposing and rebranding all their internal agency studios to production agencies as Hogarth did or buying them as Dentsu did with TAG more recently. You also have a bunch of private equity activity and the big consulting firms (Accenture, Deloitte) aggressively investing in our space acquiring small to midsize content firms and rolling them up into their holding company structure. They are mostly set up to do high-volume low-cost production work. We understand the need for that type of work and do a lot of it ourselves but, we also strongly believe that quality, talent, transparency, and strong client relationships will ultimately be what creates the best, most effective work. It's great to have endless amounts of content out there but if it's not on-brand, if it doesn’t look good, move like it should, or generate the proper conversions or results, it’s just more noise which can be confusing and do more harm than good.
At Wellcom we believe that it's important to do both well; to produce work cost-effectively while also delivering work that looks great, on strategy, and is effective. Our Micro Network of creative production agencies, including thelab and Dippin’ Sauce, gives even more of an advantage as thelab is a world class digital agency and Dippin’ Sauce is a world class VFX-Post Production studio, together we are the Wellcom group. Our Micro Network comes together to service bigger more complex scopes of work and individually our brands are experts in their area of focus. This allows us to stand up highly specialised integrated teams of experts across our Network to service complex integrated scopes of work.
LBB> Marnie, Oli, and the team have been working hard to evolve the Wellcom proposition for a changed industry landscape. What does that look like to you, and how do you envision combining creative and production together to benefit the client?
David> Marnie, Oli, and our APAC CEO Andy Lumsden have done an amazing job in Sydney establishing a creative culture, adding new services, and talent, and most importantly winning new business. What they’ve done with accounts like Freedom Furniture and Stanley has been amazing and an example of the kind of success we’re seeing across the rest of our group. Since I became Global CEO in 2021, one of my focuses has been to bring more talent and creativity into our Network.
Historically we had been more focused on high-volume low-cost production. With all the holding company, consulting, and private equity money coming into our space there has been an explosion in offshoring, automation, AI, etc. Today, many of our competitors produce most of their work offshore, even the more complex projects. We believe that in today's world, creativity and production just work better together. We believe that you get the best, most effective work when everyone has a seat at the table. All our disciplines need to be experts on our client’s brand, look, feel, tone of voice, standards, etc. for every channel. It is our responsibility to oversee their work with the same level of scrutiny that creative agencies or in-house creative teams would. It's not uncommon for us to have a creative team working side by side with developers, UX, design, animation, studio designers, and editors collaborating on the best way to create and produce a campaign or asset given time, cost, or other factors. This provides us the ability to ensure we're not wasting time selling an idea only to find that it's not affordable to make, takes too long to produce, or doesn't work right in its intended channel. Our flexible, integrated approach allows us to make work that is on-brand and effective.
LBB> The multiple-brand structure of Wellcom, thelab, and Dippin’ Sauce is already a great umbrella of digital, production and creativity. Do you intend to hold on to these brands as separate entities or is the thinking to combine the teams under one master brand?
David> As individual brands, Wellcom, thelab, and Dippin’ Sauce all have their own highly specialised services and focus. Wellcom offers global creative production at scale, thelab is a highly specialised direct-to-consumer-to-consumer/e-commerce digital agency, and Dippin’ Sauce is a world class VFX Post-production company. Together we are The Wellcom Group, a Micro-Network of highly specialised agencies that can come together to seamlessly deliver incredible results for clients across all channels, platforms, and mediums. By having these individual specialised agencies it allows them each to focus on their area of expertise, attracting the best talent while building great reputations in their respective disciplines which only makes us stronger when we come together on behalf of larger clients. Our brands also share offices in all our major locations around the globe so teams from Wellcom, thelab, and Dippin’ Sauce can easily come together when appropriate.
LBB> Australia and NZ are often seen as test beds for marketing and advertising, reflecting a similar demographic to many Western markets. Are you looking to the local team to trial a new model to bring to market in other territories?
David> We are always experimenting in all of our major markets. Much of that is client or opportunity driven. A certain scope of work in the US might allow us to flex and push certain aspects of how we work which will create learnings that are shared globally. We pride ourselves on our flat management team and our entrepreneurial culture which encourages experimentation, constant sharing of information and learnings, and a certain amount of risk taking. For example, we worked closely with Raising Cane’s in the US and produced a lot of fun AI-based work for their Times Square Global Flagship store opening. We took all of those learnings and shared them across our group so our UK or AUS teams and their clients could benefit from those experiences.
LBB> Why is this a change that needs to happen for Wellcom, and the industry in general? How do you see the future of the business?
David> I think it needs to happen to our industry in general, I don’t think the best work happens when creativity and production are siloed. Our industry has been essentially operating the same way for decades. Sure, media was pulled out of agencies years ago, and most of the production was too. Digital agencies were a big thing 20 years ago but are now all mostly owned by a holding company and run by big networks. It's a fragmented mess. I understand why it happened at the time, agencies were charging too much, marking up media and production. There was a move to more specialised businesses hoping to create more efficiencies and better results. But in the process, creative and production were decoupled, and in today’s world, I think that’s a mistake. At Wellcom we are focused on bringing the best of both worlds together. Creative teams working side by side with creative production teams allows us to make the best work more quickly, there are no silos or hand-offs, and there is constant input from the entire team.
A developer may have more influence over how a landing page or email campaign should be created than an art director as they know how to make it, same for an animator, UX person, or a designer. We are all trained on our client’s brand standards and staging, and involved in client briefings. Work doesn’t start with creative and then go to production only to find that it wasn’t designed right for that channel or translated effectively to a different medium. There just aren’t enough hours in the day anymore, but if you can save time through the integration of creative and production and put those hours towards thinking about how to make the best work possible in every medium and channel you are going to get better work produced more efficiently.
