Free.studio launches this week in Australia, with a fresh model bringing heavyweight global and local talent to Australian shores. It promises to move beyond the boundaries of a traditional client-to-agency production model and is a place where ‘ideas go to be set free’.
Unshackled from the confines of agency life, Michael McConville is on a mission. The former CEO of Cummins&Partners and managing partner of adam&eveDDB wants to unshackle the constraints of the current agency-client model and create a space where brilliant ideas can come to life.
The result is Free Creative Studio, or free.studio for short. It’s a creative collective with a membership component, which means the studio group is set up to cover hard-costs before a client conversation is even held.
The studio combines creative, production, directing, illustration, journalistic, editorial, media, strategic, AI, tech and innovation chops from around the world. It will offer a base for talent and clients to work directly together in “crack” project teams.
McConville, who sat down with B&T to discuss the concept, said that the flow-on effects and benefits of a collective model will be felt by the talent he uses from a pre-built pool, and the clients free.studio serves.
For example, there are no fixed costs that need to be covered as part of a multiplier, which McConville said “always become part of the cost to clients, and can sometimes come at the cost of the culture of that relationship”.
McConville is driven to go in a “fresh direction” after years of experience working at some of the most storied agencies in Australia and abroad.
He was the managing partner for adam&eveDDB at a time when the agency was winning awards for its work on John Lewis Christmas campaigns, being named global agency of the years’ and Agency of the Decade. Running Volkswagen, John Lewis and Deutsche Telekom at different points along the way, winning effectiveness and creative awards along the way. Prior to that McConville was client managing director at Engine/WCRS and worked with BMW and Royal Navy & Marines, again picking up long-term effectiveness awards along the way.
Most recently, he led Cummins&Partners through a period of transition, leaving the agency with solid foundations before deciding he wanted to go it alone.
“When you’ve worked with so many local and global members of our creative community, and you start thinking about where things could go next and what do I care about?’ In that sense, it’s really easy. I care about the people and the work. And making work I care about, with people I care about.
“So, the next question becomes a pretty active one – how do I get to work with as many brilliant people as possible, making brilliant work alongside them? And you recognise very quickly that maybe building another agency with the same sorts of cost-base, multipliers and access to talent, isn’t the best way to put great talent together with the clients who value and need them most.”
McConville, the ‘free founder’, has enlisted award-winning integrated producer Amy Simmons to join the collective. Simmons was the most awarded producer at the 2023 Cannes Lions for the campaign The Last Photo for CALM. She has also produced award-winning work for Pot Noodle in the UK and Taboo locally, previously working for Mother, adam&eveDDB and cummins&partners.
Other names that McConville has lined up includes:
• Pat Baron, a strategic and creative consultant and corner creative lead at HERO and McCann who has won Cannes Lions Grand Prix and Effie Grand Prix
• Matt Woolner & Steve Wioland, creative directors, formerly with adam&eveDDB, behind award-winning work for John Lewis (Always a Woman), Volkswagen, Bulmers, McCain, Great Western Railway and many others.
• Dino Burbidge, an innovation, creative, technology, media, transformation, leadership, OOH and AI Lead. Dino is the former leader of Sky Innovation Labs, one of the UK’s biggest brands. Former Disney, Mind Candy and Director of Innovation & Technology at WCRS UK (formerly Engine).
• Zöe Radas, a communications lead, editor, publisher and journalist. Former editor of STACK Magazine, Radas has interviewed famous musicians for years. And worked in long-form journalism, events and communications more generally.
McConville said that the free.studio concept has proved attractive to freelance creatives from across the world, including Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Singapore and elsewhere. He observes that there is more high level talent choosing to go freelance and apply their skills outside of the rigid confines of agency life.
“There is more talent than ever choosing to apply their skills outside of a traditional agency, and outside of having a ‘9-to-5’. More people are going freelance, and I’ve personally never seen so many great people uncontracted. And honestly, it’s only going to go more in that direction,” he said. “So all we’re doing is thinking about how to harness these changing circumstances, and people’s changing relationship with work.”
The studio is selective in who it brings into the fold on quality level, but is looking beyond traditional creative agency skills, enlisting journalists, photographers, publishers and with access to TV studios in Europe and an Emmy Award winning director in the US.
“We’ve got the best AI and media consultant, I think, in the world. We’ve got sustainability consultants, digital product design, web development, illustrators, artists and designers and the usual access to makers locally and abroad,” McConville said.
“Really, before we’ve even really started, we’ve got wider capabilities than most businesses could hope for in their lifetimes. And we don’t have a cost-base that requires a client to ever pay for more than they need.
“There’s no typical 2.2-ish multiplier in this setup,” McConville continued. “Talent can get paid properly without most of the clients’ budgets going to cover hard-costs and a multiplier. That means that the people who work with us, are choosing to. We’ll work to set ideas free; wherever those ideas come from, including and especially from clients. The business model is designed to free things up and be as pure as possible. Simply putting great people together in service of each other, and the work. Client and creative talent – in whatever form they take – together’.
The studio launches with foundation clients in Australia and the UK and is only interested in projects rather than chasing retainers or long-term contracts.
McConville said the focus will be projects work that tend to make up ‘the 20 plus the 10’ in a typical 70/20/10 split of investment and energy.
“The feedback from marketers and members was that it would be great to have something that was quick, simple, turnkey and focused on getting projects off the ground with great people, with less time and energy wasted on the setup and admin.”
As creative agency models come under intense client and cost pressure, the free.studio collective is not just designed to provide McConville and creative talent a fresh lease on professional life, it could also offer a blueprint for a sustainable creative services business model of the future.
