Special

Where to start with Special? The team delivered another virtuoso performance from client wins, to work and more. It’s no surprise that its efforts saw it named B&T’s Agency of the Year in 2025.

Let’s start with the clients.

The agency now lists 33 clients in total, 12 on retainers and 21 on a project basis. You already know about the biggest: Uber and Uber Eats, PepsiCo and The Lottery Corporation. But it shouldn’t be forgotten that Specials lists other large brands including Chobani, Mecash, Origin Energy, TLC and Virgin Australia on its books.

Its project-based clients include Airbnb, Airwallex, RACV, Audible, Xero and more, as well as ANZ Bank which it continues to work with despite declining to take part in its 2024 creative pitch.

Over the course of 2025, it won 11 new accounts including Warner Bros., Jack Link’s, Honda and a couple which we are bound to secrecy not to reveal—though you can rest assured they’re big, chunky accounts.

Special’s work with existing clients expanded, too, with its Uber and Uber Eats relationship growing into more countries (with a large portion of the work done in Sydney), it retained PepsiCo and expanded to do its PR and cover the Twisties brand and it now does Cricket Australia’s participation marketing. None of Special’s existing clients called a pitch in 2025.

Special’s work has been celebrated at awards shows around the world (43 times, to be exact), including our own B&T Awards. Work from a variety of its Asia-Pacific offices has been shortlisted 15 times in the 2026 Cairns Crocodiles Awards. At the awards ceremony, it took home seven trophies—one gold and five silvers.

Special’s work for Uber and Uber Eats continued to be strong, particularly so for Uber Eats. Its work for Bonds with Robert Irwin genuinely stopped the internet (and the B&T office) for a day.

Much of Special’s global strength is built on the back of its crack Australian teams, which isn’t surprising given what it described as a “ruthless” focus on talent.

Its Sydney teams, for example, contributed to Super Bowl campaigns and creative teams across its Sydney and Melbourne offices will often act as one department to offer opportunities for new clients. One of Special Sydney’s strategy bosses led the strategy on a global pitch out of the US. Designers partnered with London and the US on major identity projects. One of its MDs was seconded to Los Angeles to lead a major project for three months.

There’s more, so much more, from its focus on hands-on, easy access to leadership for staff development to its expanded arrangements for working parents and admirable work in the fields of diversity, equity and inclusion. But if we were to list everything, this Agency Scorecard would begin to resemble War and Peace.

It’s little wonder that Special described itself in its submission as being like Radiohead, pushing the industry and the medium forward.