2025 AGENCY SCORECARDS
Thinkerbell
Team PROFILE
Agency type
Creative
Ownership
independent
tagline
Measured Magic
LEADERSHIP TEAM
Margie Reid, Adam Ferrier, Jim Ingram
TEAM CAPTAINs
Tom Wenborn
Chief Creative Officer (South)
Jaime Morgan
MD (South)
Paul Swann
Chief Creative Officer (North)
Phillippa Netolicky
GM (North)
KEY STATS
offices
Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland
HEADCOUNT
182
gender balance
male 45%, female 55%. Leadership: male 30%, female 70%.
CLIENT WINS
27
CLIENT RETENTIONS
n/a
LARGEST CLIENTS
GWM
Lion
Hort Innovation
TROPHY CABINET
Effie Awards
1
WARC Awards
1
AWARD Awards
3
Cairns Crocodiles
5
B&T's season report
Thinkerbell’s 2024 season was all about proving it can keep racking up wins while expanding the playbook.
Still proudly independent, the agency fielded a 182-strong squad across Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland, blending strategy, creative, media, CX, design, earned, production, analytics and partnerships under its “Measured Magic” philosophy.
On the scoreboard, the numbers looked strong: 27 new client wins, including two of its larger clients in GWM and Hort Innovation, as well as Pringles. The agency also possesses an enviable client book, working with Lion, Jetstar, Menulog and Mattel, among others, but parted company with Dan Murphy’s towards the end of the year after declining to repitch for the account.
The 2024 season’s creative highlights saw Tooheys’ jingle revival becoming a State of Origin anthem, the Banana Gym Pass turning fruit into fitness fuel, and V Energy’s tongue-to-billboard stunt that went global. It also produced eye-catching campaigns for Guinness, XXXX, GWM, Jetstar and others.
The trophy cabinet was bulging with awards, including several wins at the Cairns Crocodiles.
Adding CX agency Hardhat to the roster was a bold mid-season move, strengthening its integrated model, while partnerships with The Marketing Academy and The Ethics Centre signalled a commitment to shaping the industry beyond the scoreboard.
Thinkerbell’s internal game plan in 2024 showed a clear focus on building an inclusive, future-ready organisation.
With 58 per cent female representation across the agency and near equity in leadership, the agency is running a balanced line-up at all levels.
As founding signatories of the Inclusively Made Commitment and active members of its Advisory Board, it has committed to embedding inclusion behind the scenes, not just in campaigns.
The agency’s World Improvement Plan benchmarked carbon impact and led to offices running on 100 per cent renewable energy.
Together, these moves reinforced a culture that values sustainability, diversity and doing the right thing.
Although the 2024 season had slightly less glitter than the year before, Thinkerbell enters 2025 as a fully-rounded contender with depth in every position and the agility to play any game.
campaign HIGHLIGHTS REEL
Tooheys NSW Blues Anthem
Tooheys, a 150-year Australian old beer brand deeply rooted in NSW culture, had lost cultural relevance and was in sustained decline. At the same time, the NSW Blues State of Origin team was struggling against the QLD juggernaught, the Maroons.
Our challenge was to reignite emotional connection with Tooheys by solving a real cultural need.
We revived the nostalgic “I Feel Like a Tooheys or Two” jingle — not as an ad, but as an anthem. As a Blues sponsor, we embedded the song naturally within player environments, advertising and content.
After a historic Game 2 win, the Blues spontaneously sang the jingle in the sheds — a raw, unscripted moment that exploded across media. They repeated it after winning Game 3 and the series, cementing it as a symbol of state pride.
Brand consideration rose 8.5 per cent, brand value tripled, and sales began reversing years of decline. Most importantly, the Tooheys jingle became a cultural phenomenon once again.
Australian Bananas: Banana Gym Pass
Australian Bananas challenged us to create a splash in culture for National Banana Day 2024. Six weeks out, we dove right in with banana-fuelled gusto. The priority was to remind Australians of bananas’ long-lasting natural energy. We also wanted to give National Banana Day a reason to exist.
Ideally by creating a campaign that had the momentum to gain more and more traction annually, encouraging the consumption and deployment of natural energy via bananas.
So, we did our research and found that people have been turning bananas into all types of things, like art, movies, games and really expensive wall hangings. This gave us an idea. We turned regular bananas into gym passes to get people moving and to cement ourselves as the best source of natural energy.
The idea was simple, we turned regular bananas into gym passes. Anyone who purchased a banana could use it to get free entry into hundreds of gyms nationwide on National Banana Day. It was undeniable. Bananas = energy.
As an energy source, it seemed only natural to forge fruitful partnerships with places where energy is needed. Places that are accessible and omnipresent, like gyms.
Transforming a humble fruit into both the fuel and the invitation, the Banana Gym Pass campaign got Aussies moving and reminded them that better habits could start with just one banana. And, we gave people another reason to buy bananas by leveraging Australian Bananas’ own distinctive brand asset, the banana itself.
V Energy – The Irresistibillboard
The brands with the deepest pockets in the energy category are Red Bull & Monster. As such, challengers like V Energy couldn’t hope to create the excess share of voice needed to grow demand by playing in the spots and dots media game.
For the launch of Refresh Yuzu Blackcurrant, V needed to find a way to create disproportionate mental share by making its advertising ‘famous’ i.e. utilising the power of earned reach and engagement to outshine the spend of the other big players – all the while speaking to the new flavours flavour cues: Crisp, light, refreshing.
Could the simple act of sticking a man’s tongue to a billboard generate the global reach needed to launch this product?
You bet your taste buds it did. The stunt drove 87 million impressions with 112 pieces of Australian and International earned coverage making it V’s most successful product launch ever.
Instead of playing by the traditional rules of reach, V went for an untraditional and risky approach, deliberately orchestrating a product launch to go horribly, horribly right – bringing together an impactful OOH and activation with the world of earned and best-in-class social cut-through to maximise attention
thinkerbell's Analysis of 2024
2024 was a year of re-establishing foundations and future-proofing the business. We made bold moves, investing in Hardhat, a multimillion-dollar acquisition of the strongest CX agency in the country, and partnering with The Ethics Centre. These are lateral investments, designed to ensure the agency has the right frameworks and capabilities to support our clients in a volatile and constantly disrupted marketing landscape.
We’ve now marked our eighth consecutive year of growth and continue to bend the industry towards our unique ‘Alchemy’ model—first with PR and media integration, and now with full CX capabilities. Our brand of measured magic is spreading through the industry, helping our clients drive brand-led business transformation.
B&T's agency score
thinkerbell: 8.5
COACH's COMMENT:
Thinkerbell is a side that knows its playbook inside-out and oozes confidence, discipline, and is hungry for impact. Although not its most illustrious year on the silverware front, the agency keeps pushing boundaries and is alwys one to watch.
