The Wild bills itself as a “social-first” creative agency, which sits alongside social-first publisher Jungle Creations. To learn more, we spoke to Tom McGirr, Executive Strategy Director at The Wild, a man who feels that brands have become ‘Crushingly Vanilla’ on social in 2022.
Tom discusses The Wild’s approach to creativity and the vision he has on how brands can capitalise on creativity moving forward.
How was your company born and where are you based?
The Wild was born three years ago from Jungle Creations, a social-first publisher based in East London which owns and operates 7 passion-led media brands with a combined following of over 134M.
Jungle was continually approached by brands that were struggling to drive real cut-through on social media; social agencies were unable to provide the advertising rigor brand teams expected, and traditional agencies couldn’t move quickly enough to respond to the fast paced environment. Enter, The Wild, a publisher-powered agency bringing together experienced advertising specialists with the new media flex.
What was the biggest challenge to the growth of your company?
Being a relatively new agency, our biggest challenge to growth - certainly in the earlier days — was around driving awareness of our offering and convincing brands why they should partner with us ahead of a number of other ‘new model’ agencies with ever-shapeshifting propositions.
Recent industry recognition such as as ‘Best New Agency’ from OysterCatchers, ‘Media Agency of The Year’ at the European Agency Awards and ‘Best Use of YouTube’ and ‘Best Branded Content Series (MLB)’ at the Digiday Awards have helped to reinforce the quality of our work and reassure brands that are hearing about us for the first time.
The challenge now, moreso, is around finding those brands whose values are in-line with ours — who believe that social should be core to the brand experience, not an add on, and a channel as important for long-term brand building as it is for activation.
Which was the first huge success that you can remember?
We had a flying start and secured 4 retained clients in our first 6 months, but the success that stands out as a ‘we’ve REALLY got something unique here’ moment, was winning the MLB Europe pitch at the end of our first year – entertainment orgs are a different beast to brands.
Taking on a contract of that size and scale really demonstrated our firepower vs other social agencies; being publisher-powered gives us a unique advantage in delivering cross-platform strategy and content production at that scale for an entertainment organisation.
What’s the biggest opportunity for you and your company in the next year?
Advertising spend on social media is accelerating in line with the amount of time we – the consumers – spend across platforms. Our MO this year is to change the way brands approach social, it is no longer an add on to the plan, it should be a core brand experience – where traditional advertising is spoken about in terms of narrative arcs and storytelling, we see social more like an immersive theatre production, where the audience are free to explore. This requires a totally new approach to creative, content & media planning.
Can you explain your team’s creative process? What makes it unique?
Identifying true cultural tension or slack is the aim of our creative process. We work hard to step out of the brand world and into the consumer world to create ideas with real social gunpowder at their heart. It’s easy to forget that a brand is what consumers say it is, rather than what you tell them it is.
How does your team remain inspired and motivated?
While our teams have clear roles and remit, we’ve always operated incredibly fluidly, and everyone has an equal voice in the work we create. Fostering an environment that thrives on collaboration is actually easier said than done, and a big win for us was deciding to return to the office 3 days a week.
While it means we had to return to a life of getting our washing done at the weekend, the dynamism of working together IRL is difficult to replicate on a video call – ideas, news and thoughts can traffic much more easily around a studio than on Slack.
How has COVID-19 affected your company?
Covid presented both opportunities and challenges for us at The Wild. In the first instance it accelerated the investment in social advertising, with increased demand for IRL impact – beyond sales – which was core to our proposition, so that presented a massive opportunity for us to grow quickly. The challenge for us was in maintaining culture, dynamism and an appetite for disruptive ideas when we were all WFH.
Which agencies do you gain inspiration from? Do you have any heroes in the industry?
There are so many great minds creating top work across London but the two agencies I look forward to hearing from are: Uncommon Creative Studio & Revolt. The former continually prove that brilliant ideas come in all shapes and sizes, and can thrive in any channel. The latter speak to a personal hope of mine, that great agencies don’t just drive brand communications, but inspire brand evolutions too.
What is one tip that you would give to other agencies looking to grow?
Our success is entirely contingent on our people. Forget the fluffy buzzwords, we look for nice & talented people. When you’re building something new you want to be working alongside talented & restless thinkers and doers but if it isn’t fun and inclusive, then a growing team won’t gel and you’ll lose the richness that comes with diversity of thought.
How do you go about finding new clients/business? (Pitching, work with retainers, etc.)
We’re lucky in that Jungle Creations has worked with a huge number of brand partners over the years, so those relationships are a great new business avenue for us. Beyond these existing relationships we work with a number of intermediaries who’ve not only put us in touch with the right brands, but have supported us in refining our proposition to meet the needs of the market.
What’s your one big hope for the future of the industry?
The last few years have been challenging for both agencies and businesses, and this seemed to bring about a level of creative conservatism – especially as brands are increasingly expected to take a view on social issues. I definitely hope to see agencies granted more creative freedom and room to be provocative.
Do you have any websites, books or resources that you would recommend?
Beyond the established industry publishers I spend most of my reading time trying to keep track of the increasingly fragmented attitudes and behaviours of different audiences. Flitting between Reddit, Twitter, the Daily Mail comments section and TikTok give me my lunch time fix of consumer POVs.
