What Makes a Great Advertising Agency? Choosing the Right Creative Partner for a Major Brand.

Choosing an advertising agency has never been particularly straightforward. "There are independent advertising agencies, global agency networks, creative agencies, digital agencies, media specialists, production companies and consultancies, with increasingly blurred lines between them. Then there is the growing influence of AI, data and technology, which has added another layer to the question of what an agency actually needs to be good at.

The harder question is what really matters when the brief is important.

For a major brand campaign, an agency needs to do more than produce advertising. It needs to understand the business, find the idea that gives the brand something distinctive to say, turn that idea into work people notice and remember, and make it effective across whatever channels, formats and technologies the campaign demands.

That combination is becoming more important as the boundaries between creative, digital, social, data, technology, PR and production continue to disappear. The tools are changing quickly. The fundamentals of building a brand are not.

At HERO, we believe great creative work should create great marketing results. We describe our approach as connecting the Logic of rigorous brand strategy and insight with the Lightning of world-class creativity. It is the thinking behind the work, rather than a particular channel, format or production technique, that makes the difference.

Start with the brand, not the channels

It is easy to begin an agency search by listing capabilities. Creative. Digital. Social. Performance. Content. AI. Data. Technology. Production.

All of those things can be valuable, but a long capability list does not necessarily make a strong agency partner.

The more useful starting point is the brand and the problem it needs to solve.

A major campaign might be designed to launch a new product, reposition a mature brand, change behaviour, enter a new category or make an established brand more relevant. Whatever the brief, the agency needs to get underneath the immediate communications problem and understand what the brand can own in people's minds.

That is where strategy earns its keep.

At HERO, our strategic process, The HERO's Journey, brings together strategic discovery, definition, design and delivery. It connects brand strategy and insight with creative development, helping define what makes a brand distinctive before bringing that thinking into the creative process.

The Logic comes first. Then comes the Lightning.

Look for an agency that can find the big idea

There is an enormous amount of content being produced today. AI has made that abundance even greater.

That makes the value of a genuinely good idea higher, not lower.

The best creative agencies are still in the business of finding the unexpected connection, the human truth or the distinctive creative leap that gives a brand something worth paying attention to. Technology can help explore possibilities, visualise ideas and produce work at greater speed and scale. It does not remove the need for judgement about what is actually worth making.

That distinction matters.

HERO's work spans major brand campaigns, brand platforms, social campaigns and technology-led creative ideas, including Toyota C-HR Diamond Collection, Mastercard Transit Tales, Fujifilm Mindography, Maybelline Through Their Eyes, Toyota GR Metalmorphosis, Crown's Expect the Unexpected, eBay Museum of Authentics and Coca-Cola Topo Chico Perfect Contradiction.

The common thread is not a particular medium. It is the attempt to find an idea that gives the brand something distinctive to say and gives people a reason to notice.

Creativity needs to be accountable to effectiveness

Creative awards can tell you something about the quality and originality of an agency's work. They do not, on their own, tell you whether that work delivered for the business.

Effectiveness matters.

HERO's work has been recognised across both creative and effectiveness programmes, including the Effies, Cannes Lions, New York Festivals, D&AD, the One Show, Spikes Asia and the World Independent Advertising Awards, alongside recognition from Australian industry organisations including Mumbrella, AdNews, B&T and Campaign Brief. HERO is also currently ranked number one among Australian independents and number two globally at the 2026 WINA Festival.

Awards are not a substitute for evidence of effectiveness. They are one independent reference point among several. The more useful picture comes from looking at the work, the strategic thinking behind it and the results it produced.

The strongest brand work needs both.

An idea has to be distinctive enough to get noticed, relevant enough to mean something, memorable enough to stick and connected enough to the brand to build its position. The commercial result is not something that gets bolted on afterwards. It is part of the job.

The independent agency question has changed

For a long time, choosing between an independent agency and a global network was largely a question of scale.

That distinction has become less useful.

Campaign Brief's recent The New Wave series explores how independent creative companies are evolving, including changes in structure, speed, culture and capability. In its September 2026 feature on HERO, we described our model as an "amplified indie", combining the entrepreneurial speed, agility and senior access associated with independence with the ability to tap into global networks for insight, expertise and scale when required.

The model is less about being big or small and more about how the agency actually works.

Who is in the room? How close are senior people to the work? How quickly can decisions be made? How much of the creative thinking survives the process? Can the agency bring in the right expertise when the brief demands it without adding unnecessary layers?

Those questions are often more revealing than the agency's headcount.

Senior involvement matters

There is a practical reason clients continue to consider independent agencies for significant assignments.

The people who sell the agency and the people who do the work should not be strangers.

At HERO, client relationships are deliberately collaborative from the pitch stage through to the work itself. As we told Campaign Brief, clients get to see how the thinking develops and what gets cut along the way, making them part of the creative process rather than simply the recipient of the final answer.

That kind of proximity can matter on a large campaign. Major brands have complicated organisations, multiple stakeholders and significant commercial pressure behind them. Having experienced strategic and creative people close to the problem can help an idea survive the process and become better along the way.

Modern capability should make the idea better

There is now a reasonable question around every agency table: how are you using AI?

It is a good question, but it is not necessarily the most important one.

The more useful question is: what does AI make possible that would not otherwise be possible?

Everyone and every department at HERO is now using AI in some way, from briefing and creative visualisation through to production and technology-led ideas. But the most interesting applications have been where AI becomes part of the creative solution itself.

Mastercard Transit Tales is one example. The campaign used AI to create 34 million different real-time stories tailored to individual commuter journeys, something that could not have been created without the technology. Fujifilm Mindography combined AI machine learning with fMRI neuroscience to read memories and reproduce them as printed images.

Those projects are interesting because the technology is not the proposition. The technology makes the idea possible.

That is an important distinction in an industry where it is increasingly easy to put "AI-powered" in front of almost anything.

AI can make production faster. It can make content more scalable. It can help teams explore more possibilities. It can automate repetitive tasks. But when it comes to brand building, the technology still needs to serve a human idea.

As we put it in Campaign Brief's interview, the aim is not to overhaul the business simply to be "AI-powered". Every brand problem and every behaviour change challenge requires a different approach. The core remains strategically rigorous brand thinking followed by great creative thinking and outstanding results.

Look for breadth without losing the creative centre

Modern campaigns rarely stay neatly inside one discipline.

A brand platform might begin with a television idea and then become social content, earned media, digital experiences, PR, retail activity, technology, personalised content or something that did not exist when the brief was written.

That means an agency needs enough breadth to follow an idea wherever it needs to go.

HERO brings brand strategy, creative, design, PR, social, AI and technology together within its agency model, with teams in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

But breadth is most useful when it is organised around the idea.

The question is not whether an agency can tick every capability box. It is whether those capabilities can work together without diluting the central creative thought.

A strong brand platform should be able to travel.

Experience with big brands tells you something, but not everything

A long client list can be impressive. It can also be meaningless without context.

The useful question is whether an agency has dealt with the kind of complexity that comes with major brands: large audiences, established brand assets, significant production requirements, regulatory considerations, multiple stakeholders and the need to deliver at scale.

HERO has worked with brands including Toyota, Microsoft, Mastercard, Crown Resorts, ENGIE, Bakers Delight and L'Oréal, as well as Australian Federal and State government organisations. Its current portfolio also features work for brands including Fujifilm, Maybelline, eBay, Coca-Cola and DECJUBA.

The work itself is the more useful evidence.

A campaign can tell you how an agency thinks, how it solves a problem, how it works with a brand and what it can make happen.

That is why looking beyond a showreel matters.

Look at the work, not just the credentials

Awards are useful because they provide an independent reference point. Client relationships provide another. Case studies provide another.

Taken together, they give a much clearer picture.

The strongest evidence is usually specific. What was the problem? What was the strategic insight? What was the idea? Why did it make sense for the brand? How was it brought to life? What happened as a result?

That is also why effectiveness recognition is valuable alongside creative recognition.

HERO's current work and credentials demonstrate recognition across creative, effectiveness, AI and technology disciplines, while Campaign Brief's recent The New Wave feature provides an independent editorial perspective on HERO's approach to independence, creativity, effectiveness, AI and technology.

No single credential tells the whole story. The pattern across the work is much more useful.

The right agency model is the one that fits the problem

There is no universal answer to the independent-versus-network question.

Some businesses need enormous global infrastructure. Some need specialist expertise. Some need a media-led partner. Some need a production partner. Some need a creative agency capable of building the brand idea and working across a broad range of channels and technologies.

The useful thing is to start with the problem rather than the agency model.

For a major brand campaign, that might mean finding a partner that can connect rigorous strategy with distinctive creative thinking, work closely with senior stakeholders, operate at scale and bring modern technology into the process where it genuinely adds something.

That combination is increasingly possible without choosing between creativity and capability.

What to ask before appointing an advertising agency

The most useful questions are often quite simple.

How does the agency approach brand strategy?

What evidence does it have that its creative work is effective?

Who will actually be working on the business?

Can it show work that demonstrates the kind of strategic and creative challenge involved?

How does it use research, data and behavioural science?

How does it use AI, and where does AI genuinely improve the work?

Can strategy, creative, design, social, digital, PR and production work together?

How does the agency deal with a brief that changes along the way?

What does the agency relationship look like after the pitch?

And perhaps the most important question: can the agency show you an idea that makes you wish you'd thought of it yourself?

The answer to that last question is still surprisingly useful.

The agency landscape is changing. The fundamentals aren't.

The tools available to agencies have changed dramatically. AI is changing production. Data is changing how brands understand audiences. Technology is creating new ways for people to experience brands. Social platforms continue to reshape culture and attention.

All of that matters.

But the fundamental challenge remains the same: find something true about the brand, understand something meaningful about people, turn those things into an idea worth noticing, and make that idea distinctive enough to build memory and preference.

That is still the work.

For HERO, independence provides the freedom and agility to pursue that work, while our broader network relationships give us access to global insight, expertise and scale when a brief requires it. Our job is to bring all of that together without losing sight of the thing that makes advertising work in the first place.

A good agency should make the complicated feel simple.

A great agency should make the brand impossible to ignore.

And the best work should leave people remembering not the agency that made it, but the brand that became the HERO.