Wonderhood’s New ECDs Want to “Protect Creatives’ Brains”
Stacey Bird and Jack Croft joined Wonderhood Studios in 2018 from 4creative and the duo were some of the agency’s first major hires. Fast forward to 2025 and the two are now in the spot of deputy executive creative directors. In that time Stacey and Jack built office furniture, learned how to pitch, and worked on a number of projects including Comic Relief, Nike, Migration Museum, Branston Pickle, and Starling Bank.
In their new role, Stacey and Jack are excited to bring to life “banging ideas”, in whatever shape or form that may take. They’ll also focus on creating a nurturing and fun environment for other creatives with the aim of protecting them and their ability to focus on the best work, not the myriad of worries and distractions that pull them in other directions.
LBB sat down with Stacey and Jack to reflect on their time at Wonderhood Studios to date, chat about the promotion, and find out more about future plans for more award-winning work, a great working environment, and the unusual incentive they’ll be offering their team.
LBB> Stacey and Jack, congrats on your promotion! How does this next step in your career feel?
Stacey and Jack> Ah thank you! Well, we’d be lying if we said it isn’t a little scary, but it feels exciting too. We know Wonderhood inside out really, in fact we quite literally built the furniture in the office. So, getting to now oversee some of the people that sit on that furniture feels like a good full circle.
LBB> You joined Wonderhood in 2018. What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned in that time?
Stacey and Jack> Well, we came from working five years in a place that never did a single pitch, so that was a learning curve to say the least!
When Wonderhood started it was very much all hands-on deck, like we said we were quite literally building the furniture, so we learnt so much more from being close to the founders and the TV studio.
We also had more influence on the culture and ethos than you might normally get as a senior creative and so that was pretty fundamental to how we evolved. Joining a start-up isn’t for the weak, but it’s definitely a huge injection of experience.
LBB> You’ve been instrumental in Wonderhood’s early growth. What are some of the biggest changes you’ve observed over the last few years?
Stacey and Jack> We’ve experienced a LOT of changes. In the last six years we’ve seen new people, new studios with new expertise, new offices, new clients, new challenges, a whole new media, and a new virus that caused a global pandemic to top it off. It’s all been a whole lot of new! But something we’ve been proud of is, no matter how much we’ve grown, it feels like the culture and spirit of the OG Wonderhood still remains.
LBB> You’ve worked on a lot of amazing and award-winning projects – what are some of your favourites and why?
Stacey and Jack> Wowzer, that’s a tough question.
We may have differing opinions on this. We’ve worked on almost all our clients at one point or another so there is a lot to choose from!
Stacey> Some of the projects we did early on in Wonderhood that were kind of fundamental to its growth like Comic Relief, Nike and Migration Museum still have a place in my heart because they were so vital in showing that we did actually know what we were doing. In fact, Migration Museum was our very first bit of work out ever (it looked terrible as we were also the designers at this point) and we still work with them to this day, more recently doing a really powerful project around the Euros (that thankfully actually had a talented designer on it).
Jack> The Branston Pickle ad we made back in 2020 is a special one for me as it’s inspired by our parents (two of which did ‘Private View’ a couple of years back, in Campaign). It landed really, really well with real people in the midst of lockdowns too. Who knew you could make so many people cry with an ad about pickles? Another favourite for me is the work we did for Starling Bank at the start of last year. Great writing from the team at Wonderhood, great clients, great director. Just REALLY GREAT, really.
LBB> Tell us a little bit about your new role and overseeing Wonderhood’s creative department and creative direction on key accounts. What are you excited about? Are you planning on making any changes?
Stacey and Jack> We are fortunate to have had many brilliant mentors through the years. To mention a few but certainly not all: Pablo Gonzalez De La Pena, Alice Tonge, Chris and Jon, and last but certainly not least, Mr McClure (he insists we call him that). Each of these ‘ad mums’ and ‘ad dads’ have kind of helped shape us into who we are as creatives. So, we want to take all their best bits and try and do our own version for Wonderhood’s creative department.
It sounds like a bit of a cliche, but we want to give every creative in Wonderhood the chance to make the work of their lives. And the same goes for how we’ll work with clients. We want them to feel pumped about the creative work they’re making together with us.
Oh, and we’ll make sure there’s pens in the cupboards and toilet roll in the bogs.
LBB> What kind of work are you excited to get stuck into and have the opportunity to do more of? How will nurture and encourage creatives?
Stacey and Jack> To be honest, we’re excited by any shape of work so long as it’s a banging idea that people care about. Just more of that really. More of the really, really good stuff. Big ol’ AV, nimble reactive social, beautifully simple posters. We just want to be making stuff.
As far as nurturing the next generation, we think there can be a lot of stuff to worry about as a creative. Will our idea get picked? Why can’t I think of any ideas? What even is an idea? What is the difference between a strategic proposition, creative proposition, and creative platform? Will AI take my job? The list goes on. And it’s normal to have those worries. We want to do everything we can to protect our creatives’ brains and make sure they can just focus on being creatives. Over the last few years, the state of the industry, and the world, has sometimes made creative work feel a bit too much like work, we want to try and take it back to our jobs being fun again.
We also want to incentivise people with tinned peaches, but that’s one for another time.
