Welcome back to B&T’s Best of the Best! This week, we’re saluting the fearless leaders behind Australia’s most exciting independent creative agencies, the founders and CEOs who are not just steering the ship but redesigning the whole damn vessel as they go.
These are the decision-makers who’ve built award-winning cultures, landed iconic campaigns, and proved that independence isn’t a limitation, it’s a superpower.
Our criteria? We looked at agency momentum, creative output, business performance, leadership vision, and how future-fit each business really is. We also examined your nominations, making sure no stone is unturned in our search for leadership excellence.
Some of these leaders are seasoned veterans, others relatively new faces, but all are redefining what it means to run a modern creative business in an era of constant change.
There’s still plenty of time to nominate for the upcoming categories, too. Next week, we’re taking a look at the Best of the Best indie media agency leaders.
NOMINATE FOR B&T’s BEST OF THE BEST NOW!
But now for not it is all eyes on the indie creative agency bosses. Whether it’s launching global movements, crafting AI tools, flipping the media model, or turning Happy Meals into Squid Games, these ten leaders have delivered creativity with serious impact, and not a holding company in sight.
10. Simon Joyce, founder/CEO, Emotive
Simon Joyce has carved out a unique space in Australia’s creative landscape by building Emotive into a cultural and creative force that’s impossible to ignore.
From the moment he launched with an audacious anti-ad campaign for Optus starring Ricky Gervais, Joyce has focused on reshaping what advertising can be, putting emotional impact at the core of every idea.
Under his leadership, Emotive has evolved into a multidisciplinary indie agency that thrives on bold thinking and brand fame, attracting top-tier clients like Google, Optus (which will soon move to Droga5), NRL, Revlon and Breville, as well as some of the country’s most sought-after creative talent.
At the heart of Emotive’s success is Joyce’s unwavering belief that ideas must change how people feel, a philosophy that has translated into standout campaigns like Google’s Cairns Crocodiles Award winning “Bowled & Beautiful,” starring Magda Szubanski as Sharon Strzelecki (see below).
With a beachside HQ designed to foster expansive thinking, Joyce has cultivated a culture where creativity is not just celebrated, but strategically channelled across entertainment, experience, media and design. His passion, energy and strategic instincts have helped Emotive deliver year-on-year growth while staying fiercely independent and culturally relevant.
With a career that spans media executive leadership and early digital innovation (including being instrumental in launching VEVO in Australia), Joyce brings a rare blend of commercial savvy and creative ambition. But it’s his vision of advertising as a driver of cultural and emotional connection, not just sales, that sets him apart.
9. Jules Hall, CEO, The Hallway
Jules Hall has spent the past two decades redefining what a modern creative agency can be. As founder and CEO of The Hallway, he brings the strategic mind of a former management consultant and the creative instincts of a lifelong storyteller.
Since launching the agency in 2007, Hall has steadily shaped The Hallway into one of Australia’s most respected and values-driven indies, one that blends imagination with intelligence to deliver what it calls “Calculated Creativity.” Hall has proven that bold creative thinking and commercial impact don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
What sets Hall apart is his deep belief that business can and should be a force for good. In 2024, he led The Hallway through a rigorous 18-month process to achieve B Corp certification, formalising the agency’s triple-bottom-line commitment to people, planet and profit. This milestone came on the back of a stellar year that saw the agency grow by 45 per cent and continue to drive strong results for purpose-led brands such as Boody.
It’s all part of a bigger philosophy: that building a sustainable business means embedding purpose at every level, from how campaigns are created to how staff are supported, with initiatives like expanded parental leave and volunteer days.
Hall’s leadership is grounded in rigour and vision. A former elite rower for Great Britain and seasoned ocean sailor, he brings both discipline and ambition to his work, qualities that have helped The Hallway win a number of accolades, including multiple B&T Agency of the Year awards. A recent example is The Hallway’s ‘The Cardboard Cake’, which won a silver Cairns Crocodile and a bronze Cannes Lion.
After the recent departure of creative partner Simon Lee to Enigma, Hall continues to lead from the front, proving that doing the right thing and doing standout work go hand in hand.
8. Nick Hunter, CEO, Paper Moose
Nick Hunter has spent more than a decade at the helm of Paper Moose, building not just an agency, but an innovation engine for the future of advertising.
With roots in film and content production, Hunter brings a deep understanding of storytelling craft and an entrepreneurial appetite for reinvention.
Since co-founding Paper Moose in 2009, he’s led its evolution from a production company to a full-service creative agency, blending bold ideas with empirical smarts. From Mitsubishi Electric to Real Insurance, the agency continues to land high-profile accounts by proving that wildly practical ideas win big.
Under Hunter’s leadership, Paper Moose has become a home for creative experimentation and tech-driven solutions. Now B Corp certified, the agency launched its new positioning ‘Wildly Effective’ in 2025, reflecting its ethos of pairing emotive storytelling with cutting-edge marketing science.
At the heart of this is Moose Review, a proprietary AI testing platform that lets brands test and optimise creative in real time using synthetic panels. It’s a future-facing tool built in-house to empower braver ideas and faster insights, increasing the agency’s pitch success rate by 60 per cent in just six months.
Whether launching the first VR comedy pilot in Australia or designing AI tools that redefine creative testing, Hunter is relentless in pushing boundaries. But it’s not disruption for disruption’s sake, it’s about making better work, more efficiently and with lasting impact.
As he steers Paper Moose into its next chapter, Hunter continues to prove that the most potent combination in advertising today is creativity backed by rigour, and a fearless willingness to reimagine the process from the ground up.
7. Laura Aldington, Co-Founder, Supermassive
Laura Aldington has built Supermassive into one of Australia’s most exciting creative forces, an agency with a mission to deliver “disproportionate impact” through non-traditional ideas anchored in strategic clarity alongside Simone Gupta and Jon Austin. Together, they bring a rare combination of creative leadership, brand nous and earned media mastery, and it shows.
Just over two years, Supermassive has already earned a coveted spot on the global creative stage with its two-time gold Cairns Crocodile-winning and Titanium Cannes Lions-shortlisted “36 Months” campaign, a social movement designed to raise the minimum social media age to 16.
Aldington, with more than 25 years advising iconic brands across the UK, US, and Australia, brings a coaching-led leadership style and sharp commercial instinct to her role. She’s widely respected for insisting that creativity must drive real-world outcomes, not just likes, but lasting change. As deputy chair of the Advertising Council of Australia, she continues to shape the broader industry conversation around effectiveness, brand-building, and ethical impact.
6. Jaimes Leggett, founding partner, Today The Brave
Jaimes Leggett has long been a force in advertising, but with the launch of Today the Brave, he’s created something far more than another agency; he’s built a bold, full-service creative shop with purpose stitched into its name.
Founded in late 2022, the agency has quickly made waves by pairing cultural smarts with commercial impact, landing major clients like News Corp, MECCA, HOYTS, and the University of Sydney within its first 18 months. Under Leggett’s leadership, the team has tripled in size, added media and PR capabilities and earned Emerging Agency of the Year at the B&T Awards, proof that bravery is more than a brand statement; it’s a business strategy.
What makes Leggett stand out is his ability to distil complexity into clarity, turning big ideas into real-world results. With decades of experience leading some of the industry’s top agencies across the UK and Australia, he brings both creative pedigree and entrepreneurial edge.
Whether helping Carnival Cruise Line reignite excitement or turning discarded nang canisters into luxury chocolate tins, Leggett’s creative leadership encourages teams to find meaning and magic in unexpected places.
Beyond client campaigns, Leggett fosters a culture of experimentation and mischief that keeps Today the Brave refreshingly human. The agency is a living example of how brave ideas can build brands, businesses and a few laughs along the way.
5. Margie Reid, CEO, Thinkerbell
Margie Reid is the driving force behind Thinkerbell’s unstoppable momentum, a leader who brings clarity, structure and a whole lot of magic to one of the industry’s most inventive creative agencies.
With a background in media and a passion for building strong systems around creativity, Reid has helped define and scale Thinkerbell’s unique brand of “Measured Magic”, creative ideas grounded in marketing science and brought to life through campaigns that truly resonate.
Her leadership has helped Thinkerbell attract major brands like Bega, Lion, IAG and Hort Innovation, while building a culture where weirdness is welcome and effectiveness is everything.
Reid’s proudest achievement might just be what’s happening behind the scenes, fostering a culture where every person is empowered to be their full, weird self. Whether it’s through agency-wide festivals, values reframed as “Actions”, or rituals like Magic Hour and Measured Mondays, Reid leads a team that thinks deeply, acts boldly and delivers work that turns heads while moving the needle.
Reid’s impact goes far beyond her agency walls. She sits on boards like Support the Girls and Inclusively Made, speaks candidly about leadership and resilience, and actively champions a more inclusive industry.
Her vision is not just to create great work, but to build a business that supports its people, challenges the status quo, and continuously redefines what creative agencies can be.
4. Micah Walker, founder/CCO, Bear Meets Eagle On Fire
Micah Walker doesn’t just run a creative studio; he’s built a space where imagination leads and the rules of traditional advertising get rewritten.
As founder and chief creative officer of Bear Meets Eagle on Fire, Walker has carved out a fiercely independent, creatively uncompromising agency that thrives on craft, narrative and deep emotional resonance.
With more than two decades leading the creative charge at agencies like Wieden+Kennedy, Fallon and Leo Burnett, Walker’s global experience has shaped an instinctive ability to bring humanity and originality to every brand story, from niche players like Rollin Insurance to giants like Telstra.
In just five years, Bear Meets Eagle on Fire has developed a reputation for delivering some of the most beautifully crafted, conceptually rich work in the region. Walker’s approach is deceptively simple: “do smart things in imaginative ways”.
That ethos is on full display in Telstra’s “Wherever We Go” platform, a whimsical, cinematic campaign that pairs world-class animation, illustration, and storytelling to completely reframe how the brand presents itself in culture.
Dubbed as potentially one of the most hated ads of all time by disgruntled NRL fans on social media and a lukewarm panel on Gruen, the campaign has nevertheless been attracting the attention of award programs across the globe, including Bronze at the Cairns Crocodiles Awards in the integrated category.
Perhaps a career-defining piece of work is Telstra’s stop motion series ‘Better on a Better Network’ (see video ab0ve), which overnight picked up the Cannes Lions Grand Prix in the Film Craft category. Additional Lions for Donkey and Shoemaker underline why may industry observers regard Bear Meets Eagle on Fire as the hottest creative shop in Australia this year.
There’s no formula at Bear Meets Eagle on Fire, just a commitment to people, principles and provocative ideas. Walker’s belief in assembling the right crew for the right project, and resisting the disruption-for-disruption’s-sake trap, has allowed the studio to stay nimble, relevant and enviably distinct.
3. Lindsey Evans, CEO and partner, Special
Lindsey Evans is the force behind one of the most daring and consistently brilliant creative agencies in the country.
As CEO and partner at Special, she has helped transform the agency into a powerhouse that blends strategic smarts with cultural resonance, producing campaigns that don’t just win awards, they shift the dial. With a sharp eye for consumer insight and a fearless approach to leadership, Evans empowers her team to dream big, push boundaries, and deliver work that both captivates and performs.
Under Evans’ guidance, Special has amassed a staggering collection of accolades, including a third Grand Prix at the 2023 B&T Awards, and multiple wins again in 2024. The agency work for Uber Eats is a regular feature in B&T’s Campaigns of the Month. It’s testament to her relentless pursuit of creative and commercial excellence.
Her leadership is defined by collaboration, ambition and a refusal to settle for the expected. Whether the brief is global or local, she ensures the work is bold, culturally attuned, and strategically sound, a rare and potent combination in today’s fragmented media landscape.
What makes Evans stand out is not just her record of success, but how she achieves it: through curiosity, courage, and a genuine belief in the power of creativity to move people and brands forward.
She’s helped make Special more than just a name; it’s become a benchmark for modern advertising done right well beyond Australia’s and New Zealand’s shores.
2. Chris Howatson, CEO, Howatson+Company
Chris Howatson has redefined what a modern independent agency can look like, and more importantly, what it can achieve. As founder and CEO of Howatson+Company, he’s taken a vision and built it into one of the most awarded and respected creative agencies in Australia.
With deep experience leading transformative work at CHE Proximity and a track record of fusing brand strategy with data, design, and tech, Howatson launched his own shop in 2021 with a clear purpose: to reestablish advertising as a multidisciplinary profession that drives economic and cultural value.
That vision is paying off. In just a few short years, Howatson+Company has delivered genre-defining campaigns like Modibodi’s ‘I’m Dying Inside’ a taboo-breaking TikTok series that helped reframe period care for Gen Z, and the ABC’s ‘Always Free, Always Entertaining’, which turned iView into a savvy, cost-of-living hero.
Both campaigns swept categories at the 2024 B&T Awards, while Petbarn’s ‘PetWatch’ project blended data and behavioural insights into a tool that’s not only smart but life-saving.
It’s no wonder the agency claimed B&T’s Advertising Agency of the Year, a Gold Cairns Crocodile Award for design excellence and was voted one of the world’s top eight agencies, all while acquiring indie agency Akkomplice and expanding into striking new offices that reflect Howatson’s belief that environment fuels creativity.
But for all the polish, the core of Howatson’s philosophy remains grounded in purpose and people. He’s capped the agency’s growth at 200 staff to preserve its “intimacy inflection point”, ensuring every person and every client stays connected to the work.
Whether he’s mentoring the next generation of marketers, advocating for diversity, or obsessing over the smallest details of a plinth display that puts the client, not the trophy, at the centre, Chris Howatson proves that creative leadership doesn’t just build brands. It builds trust, ambition, and impact that lasts.
1. Aden Hepburn, CEO, Akcelo
Aden Hepburn has redefined what a modern agency can be. As CEO of Akcelo, he’s led one of the most disruptive and high-performing creative businesses to emerge in the last decade, one that doesn’t just flirt with innovation, but builds it into every layer of the business.
Launched in 2020, Akcelo blends creativity, digital experience, design, technology, and strategy into a single agile offering that’s perfectly tailored for how modern brands operate.
Under Hepburn’s leadership, the agency has landed powerhouse clients like Red Bull, TikTok, SPC Global and McDonald’s, all while developing a reputation for delivering brand acts that work across every touchpoint.
In 2024, Akcelo shocked the industry by being named B&T’s Agency of the Year, a title rarely awarded to an agency so young, or so unapologetically non-traditional.
The crown jewel? Its work with McDonald’s and Netflix on the ‘Squid Game Meal: Dare to Play?’ campaign, which reimagined a global pop culture phenomenon as a gamified brand experience and earned the agency a Grand Prix at the Cairns Crocodile Awards.
From immersive digital challenges to real-world activations and co-branded merchandise, the campaign captured both imaginations and results, proving Akcelo can play in the biggest arenas while maintaining its innovative edge.
What makes Hepburn stand out isn’t just the work, it’s the model. He’s built a company that thrives on discomfort, favours project-based partnerships, and deliberately stays ahead of where the industry is heading.
With automated systems, staff equity programs, carbon neutrality and a culture that’s as focused on mental wellbeing as it is on marketing effectiveness, Hepburn’s Akcelo is proof that doing things differently isn’t a risk, but a competitive advantage. And in an era where brands need more than just ads, Hepburn’s full-spectrum approach has turned Akcelo into a blueprint for the future.
And that’s why Aden Hepburn is B&T’s top Best Of The Best Indie Creative Agency boss!
