B&T's Agency Scorecard: Special
KEY PLAYERS
Special
Creative Agency
Owned By
independent
Team Captain
lindsey evans
Leadership Team
Tom Martin
CCO Australia
Julian Schreiber
CCO Australia
Dave Hartmann
CSO Sydney
Bec Stambanis
CSO Melbourne
STATS
headcount
150
client wins
7
client Retentions
0
THREE LARGEST CLIENTS
uber
anz Banking group
virgin australia
TROPHY CABINET
B&T awards 2023
Grand Prix: B&T Agency of the Year
4x Campaign Awards (Best Content Marketing Strategy, Best Media Campaign, Best Integrated Ad Campaign, Best TV Campaign)
Victorian Agency of the Year
Agency of the Year for Queensland, Other States & NZ
WaRC
Most Effective Independent Agency in the World
1x Gold, 1x Bronze
Cannes
1 x Bronze
award awards
Agency Network of the Year
1x Gold, 2x Silver, 3x Bronze, Account Team of the Year (Virgin Australia)
Spikes Asia
1x Gold, 1x Silver, 3x Bronze
D&AD
1x Yellow Pencil (Gold), 1x Graphite Pencil (Silver), 1 x Wood Pencil (Bronze)
effies
APAC: 1x Silver, 1x Bronze
Australia: 2x Silver, 2x Bronze
Special by name, Special by nature, you’d be hard pushed to find an agency not envious of this rock-solid indie.
Not only does Special – headed up by a modest and quietly cool CEO Lindsey Evans – have cracking clients and enviable growth, but its shelves are stuffed to the gills with gold awards across a swathe of remits and clients.
Highlights include global ad campaign fame and success, including that splash of coveted Superbowl ads for UberEats, as well as cleaning up at the B&T Awards and being names WARC’s most effective indie in the world.
On the new business front, Special has been shoring up its client book, which now numbers 29, picking up Coopers Brewery, Swisse and eBay. It now has its sauce over a range of iconic brands such as ANZ Banking Group, Virgin Australia and more.
With offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland, Special’s creative wiring is plugged in across the globe as it continues to encourage collaboration between offices and offer exchange programs globally.
Special’s team swelled by 15 per cent across 2023 and it has taken steps to improve its parental leave policy, among other staff wins. It also boasts having a number of parents working part time, something that is still a huge rarity across the sector.
As well as offering cultural capability training for everyone with a First Nations partner, the agency invested with the Dylan Alcott Foundation to launch Shift20, a major industry initiative to change the representation of disability in advertising.
Having commenced its BCorp Certification application, it’s clear Special not only focuses hard on building its clients’ DNA, but gives just as much love to its own booming brand.
2023 was a special year for the agency, which is a shining light in the industry.
SPECIAL'S ANALYSIS OF 2023
2023 was a big year, set on making big things happen. A year of biting off more than we could chew and finding a way to chew it. We took on the all-important challenge of disability representation in our industry, launching the Shift 20 initiative. We helped take Uber’s global business from food delivery to everything delivery, in 12 global markets. We upped the ante on the Cola wars with Pepsi, helped eBay get back to their founding purpose, continued to reimagine what flying could be with Virgin Australia, and with the help of the Beckhams, caused a global Superbowl storm. It was a year that we doubled down our investment in our people and culture – growing the team across Sydney, Melbourne and Tokyo, and completely overhauling our policies in regard to Psychosocial work design, an approved RAP plan and a major investment in training. And a year we launched and grew Special PR from 1 person to 6 with 7 clients. It was one big old year.
MVP: Vishal Parikh, head of finance
“Vish has completely overhauled our financial processes and commercial practices and has done so in the most human way. Running our business better has made us a healthier, happier and a more creative and more supported culture.”
