Howatson+Company had, by any estimation, a 2024 season to remember. It was named Cannes Lions’ Independent Australian Agency of the Year, scooped five B&T Awards, including Advertising Agency of the Year and produced some incredibly important and impressive pieces of work for some of the nation’s largest businesses.

Its Sydney team also moved into a new home ground on South Dowling street and it opened studios in Clovelly and Cremorne to base its new AI-focused Plus Also studio from in the final month of the season. But more on that in a moment.

On the new business front, team captain Chris Howatson and his charges had a very impressive year winning significant retained clients for major holdco and indie rivals alike. It won creative, strategy and production work for Myer, Dulux Group and AP+, as well as the global creative and production for Airtasker.

Howatson+Company also brought on its largest media client after winning the full-service account for Honda. It also retained the creative and production for UNSW, adding the university’s media work to its remit too.

Over the year, Howatson+Company lost two clients, resigning TK Maxx after it won Myer’s account. All told, the agency said its revenue grew some 20 per cent year-on-year.

All of this, however, exists on the backdrop of what Howatson+Company called an “existential moment”. It was fretting, and rightly so, about whether AI would make the agency and the industry a thing of the past. After soul-searching, it found its answer: “Our industry is going to dramatically change. It already is”.

It determined the cure to this AI malady was to invest AI tools to create horizontal integration of production that integrates technology, physical space and traditional craft roles of cinematography, photography, editing and sound. To make that a reality, it launched Plus Also Studios and invested some $2 million in labour costs to create proprietary AI tools specifically focused on the application of corporate Advertising. The agency says it’s an area both Adobe and Canva have ignored.

It hired 25 full time equivalents to staff its new AI-driven production arm, including MD Jess Coulson, creative director Effie Athanassiou. It named Hoang Nguyen, Howatson+Company’s chief data and technology officer as the founder of Plus Also. Its tools, available separately to a retained or project-based account with Plus Also, were adopted by Qantas, News Corp, Petbarn and Foxtel and delivered “immediate” cost efficiencies. Howatson+Co added that Plus Also was “key” to winning Endeavour Group and Myer.

Now it reckons that Plus Also’s new biz pipeline is larger than it ever has been for Howatson+Company. A year on from its moment of crisis and nine on from launch, Plus Also Studios is apparently on target to deliver $10m in revenue in its first year of trading, operating at an EBIT 50 per cent higher than Howatson+Company.