In the world of creative agencies, Wonderful stands apart with its unique blend of strategic thinking and imaginative execution. Founded in 2007 by Dan Maudhub, the agency has evolved from its roots in Maidstone, Kent to a fully remote operation with hubs in Kent and London.
In this exclusive interview, we sit down with Philip Hansen, Creative Director, and Dan Maudhub, Managing Director, to delve into the journey of Wonderful, their challenges, successes, and the ethos that drives their innovative team.
From the transformative impact of their BCorp certification to the wonder-inspired creative process that sets them apart, Philip and Dan share invaluable insights into what makes Wonderful a beacon of creativity and strategic brilliance in the industry.
How was your company born and where are you based?
Originally based in Maidstone, Kent but since 2023 we have become fully remote with a base in Kent and London for our team to meet regularly. Wonderful Creative Agency was founded in 2007 by Dan bringing strategic creative thinking into an increasingly digital, customer experience.
What was the biggest challenge to the growth of your company?
Growing an agency is always about overcoming many challenges rather than one big obstacle. If we had to pick one it would be the ability to scale our successes, creating a blueprint for the team and processes beyond individuals is a challenge for every creative driven business.
Which was the first huge success that you can remember?
Success comes in many different forms, as a business our BCorp certification was a big step in setting our culture and priorities.
From a project perspective your last one is always your favourite but one of the first stand out projects that comes to mind is the global advertising campaign we ran for Quandoo, a great creative concept around booking in the moment, rolled out in 11 cities across the world on everything from station takeovers to tram wraps.
What’s the biggest opportunity for you and your company in the next year?
Our biggest opportunity every year is always helping our clients to cut through and make meaningful moments. Many of our clients are facing challenging economic conditions and that’s where the ability to make a strategic shift in the way you connect with and engage customers really shows its value. Right now we’re helping clients engage with customers in new ways.
Can you explain your team’s creative process? What makes it unique?
Our approach is built around the mindset and creation of wonder. We firmly believe that having a sense of wonder is the best start to an idea, being endlessly curios and open to what’s possible.
Wonder helps us go beyond just being creative to something that combines creativity with human insight and experience, that human focus helps us create connection as well as stand out. Our process always starts with ‘we wonder if…’ and is continually accountable to the experience we are trying to create for people.
How does your team remain inspired and motivated?
The very nature of being inspired means we are always looking for new sources. For us team culture and connection are important for motivation and knowledge sharing is key to remaining inspired.
We have regular team days where we can reconnect, collaborate and share experiences together which are absolutely essential to our culture. Our internal ‘TedX Wonderful’ slack channel, webinars and team collaboration enable knowledge sharing to inspire us to be better every week.
How has COVID-19 affected your company?
What happened during that time has affected all of our working lives. It has enabled us to recruit the best talent from across the world as well as disrupting established working patterns, meaning we can be more flexible and reimagine what working culture we want as an agency.
Which agencies do you gain inspiration from? Do you have any heroes in the industry?
There’s always so much great work to be found and agencies that are pushing forward. We work with some great partners like Keel, Free Partners, Something Else who are always inspiring our own team.
What is one tip that you would give to other agencies looking to grow?
Growth certainly doesn’t come without hard work but we’ve found that remembering to put as much energy into designing and crafting your customer experience as you do into your work is so important to sustainable growth. How your customers feel about the experience is what they’ll tell others about.
How do you go about finding new clients/business? (Pitching, work with retainers, etc.)
We work with clients on both a project and a retainer basis, some of which we have pitched for and some have been referrals.
We have case study and brand content coming out all the time, we invest in our SEO, we run events and webinars but the reality is those things are all about how we can connect with people because that’s where we win new work.
What’s your one big hope for the future of the industry?
That it keeps evolving as fast as technology and business needs are. As we see design, branding and creativity become more and more accepted as essential business functions, agencies will have to keep demonstrating the power of an outside perspective and strategic expertise to create competitive advantage .
Can you share a defining moment in your company's journey that shaped its identity or direction?
One of the defining moments for us was rediscovering and embracing wonder. We’ve always been Wonderful and joked about the cliches and puns that come from having that name but what really helped us unlock our identity was when we embraced that identity rather than joking about it.
Wonder had always been in our name but when we researched and explored what wonder does both emotionally and rationally it has really helped us capture our approach and ethos to doing great work.
Can you share a memorable client success story that exemplifies your company's approach and impact?
The work we did for The Art of Data app is a great example of our moments of wonder, human first approach in action. The objective was to create cut through and capture engagement at Cannes Lions for the data driven partnership between Verve Group and Getty Images. How do we demonstrate the combined power of data and imagery as a way to capture a moment?
There were many cool ways we could use technology but we really wanted to capture the human, emotions associated with moments and translate those into a creative output. The breakthrough came from using imagery rather than text as the user response and by abstracting the artwork we were able to capture how people felt rather than what they thought. The result captured the mood at that moment and gave the data a much more human expression, as well as capturing over 600 leads in a highly competitive space.
How do you approach sustainability and ethical practices within your company's operations and projects?
Our BCorp certification provides us a really good framework to measure our impact and continually improve across People, Planet and Profit. We’ve always been driven as an agency to have a purpose beyond pure commercial business metrics. We’ve had a charitable foundation for some time (Wonderful Foundation) which has enabled us to support some incredible social causes but BCorp has really helped to provide a framework for us to embed positive impact into what we do.
It’s a key part of our culture that we are always looking at how we as a team can be better, how we can make a difference with our people and the world around us. As part of our Impact Business Model we are committed to give 10% of our net profit to charity which really connects the benefits of doing great work for clients with our ability to have a positive impact.
