In 2018, Richard Stanton and Toby Strangewood had a working hypothesis for a new agency. They wanted to build a marketing communication agency purposely designed for the unique needs of businesses going through critical periods of change.
5 years on and Wake The Bear has earned a reputation for solving complex business and marketing challenges, resulting in them being the agency partner of choice for businesses starting, scaling and transforming. We caught up with Toby to learn more.
How was your company born and where are you based?
By 2018, my co-founder Rich Stanton and I had worked in a variety of agencies, from global holding companies to small specialist boutiques, spanning advertising, branding and media agency formats.
Having been in the industry for some time, we felt the most rewarded and valued by clients when we were able to deliver work that made a material impact to their business, so we knew that had to be a central pillar to the offering we wanted to create.
Our hypothesis was that to do great work on a daily basis - the kind of work that is so interesting and challenging that your head is constantly whirring and you have to be at the top of your game - requires a type of client that’s going through the most complex of business challenges themselves, as opposed to just giant clients that only want a steady hand on the tiller but no change in direction.
We quickly identified the three key inflection points of business growth (starting, scaling, transforming) as those moments that matter, the points in time where we could not only provide the most value to a business, but the most rewarding value back to ourselves and our team.
Focusing on these specific business need points guided everything else about how Wake The Bear was designed and built. From the capabilities we had to offer, to our approach to solving complex challenges, to the people and processes we established and fostered.
What was the biggest challenge to the growth of your company?
In our five years of existence, we’ve had Covid and now the threat of recession. These macroeconomic challenges have forced us to ensure our business model is adaptable to unpredictability. As we continue to scale year-on-year, we need to ensure we don’t lose our nimbleness.
Which was the first huge success that you can remember?
In our first week of inception, perhaps even before we had a company name, Rich and I were invited extremely late in the day to a creative pitch for a major retail bank who were launching a new fintech brand.
Our nascent philosophy towards solving business challenges meant that even if we could have miraculously created a compelling creative idea in two days, it would fundamentally not have been right to show it, as we believe any work has to be created with a deep-rooted understanding of the business.
Instead we pitched our process of HOW we’d get to their answer, not what the answer was. Our product design methodologies and first principle thinking to solving business and marketing challenges resonated because we were pitching to founders, engineers and product people.
We stripped away all the marketing BS, and took them through how a complex challenge would be broken down and solved in smaller sprints and how key stakeholders would be aligned throughout, fundamentally allowing for quicker decision making and launch to market.
A fairytale ending would be to say we won, but we didn't. We came second to a small shop called Ogilvy. However the next day the CMO offered us a broader role in helping launch a portfolio of new brands and change products for the main bank.
What’s the biggest opportunity for you and your company in the next year?
Since our inception, we’ve helped countless businesses start, scale and shake-up. To do that, the team has effectively and efficiently solved some quite onerous business and marketing challenges.
The WTB team is now armed with a deep understanding and the practical knowledge of the mindsets and drivers of change within most scales of businesses and across a wide array of business cultures. Our biggest opportunity for our own agency growth is to better share this knowledge and those successes within the wider business and investment community.
Can you explain your team’s strategy / process? What makes it unique?
Using our clear focus on who we wanted to build the agency for, we’ve removed all marketing bullshit around strategy and process. The DNA of our entire business is borne from Delivering business results with speed and agility.
From this guiding direction, we designed and built the agency from the bottom up.
We always talk business first - marketing is purely a means to an end - and our team knows as much about supply chain issues, product tolerances and cash flow as they do about how to create a compelling marketing campaign.
Our business consultancy quickly became a key capability of the agency. Clients going through critical periods of change need to align on what business results are important and why, and then they need to achieve them quickly. Speed of working is therefore a core focus of Wake The Bear.
From the outset we adopted Sprint methodologies, along with product design thinking to take big, amorphous business challenges and break them down into quick solvable sections. Important in the sprint process is our ability to collaborate and bring stakeholders along.
There’s no point devising a solution to a business challenge if the proposed solution faces endless peer reviews and exposure to an executive team that either don’t understand or don’t agree with it, meaning it’s scrapped or takes up valuable time being adapted.
The nature of our clients’ business also means things like annual planning and long media booking lead times - especially TV - just aren’t practical. A high growth business, or one going through radical change, might not be able to think more than a month out at any time - some are day-by-day.
Our ‘Agile Media Approach’ as one of example of this, means we can book the best quality inventory extremely late, go live within a few days, and defer or pause that campaign the following day if necessary. This gives a business going through critical changes the confidence that their actions in the market can be adapted immediately to their business situation.
How does your team remain inspired and motivated?
Wake the Bear was created to give everyone the opportunity to do career-defining work, every day. Work that fundamentally solves the most complex and interesting business challenges.
Because of how we work, and the types of client we work with, our team acts as an extension of their team. We are invited into the inner sanctum of our clients’ organisations and given permission to make fundamental changes. That’s a stark difference to being seen and treated as just the creative / media / digital (insert capability) agency.
How has COVID-19 affected your company?
During Covid we saw certain things completely switch off for some clients, including paid media. However, as our client relationships tend to involve us working across multiple elements of their business, when one need switches off, another, such as growth planning or business modelling, has a greater need.
We also had a number of D2C clients who, once we helped them adjust to the new norms of Covid - including supply chain issues - were able to thrive in that period.
Which agencies do you gain inspiration from? Do you have any heroes in the industry?
I know this is where you’re meant to gush over an individual or agency, but I don’t really have any single ‘hero’ in the industry. I’ve been fortunate to have worked with so many great people over my career that I feel I’ve taken little bits of insight and learned from so many over the years.
Likewise with businesses and other organisations I admire, there are always little nuggets that I see, hear or experience that I look to leverage and pull value from.
What is one tip that you would give to other agencies looking to grow?
To understand and acknowledge what growth and success you’re actually seeking as a business. Growth can be revenue, or achieving other aspirations you have beyond just money in the bank.
When we talk about growth to our own clients, we ask them the ‘style’ by which they want to achieve it. An emerging FMCG brand for example could potentially hit and exceed its growth targets by white labelling its product. However there may be an underlying desire to create an exceptional, meaningful brand in the process. That’s knowing your style of growth.
How do you go about finding new clients/business? (Pitching, work with retainers, etc.)
In the early days our growth was very organic. Once we’d proven our value as a partner to our first client, it opened up more opportunities across their wider business. We’re often brought in to fix a particular pain point, but then transition into multiple projects with them thereafter or are referred to other people in our clients’ network, opening doors at exciting new start-ups and within global organisations alike.
We’re also deeply integrated into the VC community, so we’re often the first person a founder calls once they receive investment. Wake the Bear also operates within the wider Miroma Group, which is a collection of leading marketing agencies, and love collaborating and introducing clients between ourselves.
What’s your one big hope for the future of the industry?
In a 2021 Ipsos Mori survey of the British public, 16% of people said they would “generally trust” ad professionals to be truthful, ranking the advertising industry at the very bottom.
I hope that as an industry we can earn that trust back. We want to be an exciting career path for the most interesting and diverse talent to come into, so how we present ourselves and how we ensure inclusion in our recruitment are all vital components we must continually focus on.
Do you have any websites, books or resources that you would recommend?
I love a good business book, normally via Audible so I can listen as I run to work. I’ve recently enjoyed and indeed gained usable insight from Banking on It by Anne Boden, Elon Musk by Ashley Vance, and Bob Iger’s Ride of a Lifetime. Podcasts like How I Built This with Guy Raz also give great snapshots into the trials and tribulations of running a business, and the mindsets needed to succeed.
I also love anything on economics and data. Journalists like Tim Harford, aka the Undercover Economist and author of How to Make the World Up, help you ensure you correctly interrogate whatever data you’re presented with.
Also, anything on the design process and design-led thinking. Emotion By Design by Nike’s former CMO Greg Hoffman, is outstanding.
