Welcome back to B&T’s Best of the Best. This week, we’re turning the spotlight on the leaders running Australia’s independent creative agencies. The founders and CEOs who’ve built something remarkable without safety net of a holding company.
The independent creative sector has never been more competitive. As the holdcos consolidate and restructure, the indies have been quietly eating their lunch.
This year’s list has proven to be incredibly difficult to compile. The standard of leadership across the sector was exceptional and more than a few very deserving people didn’t make the final cut. While it may seem harsh, it means the industry is thriving.
In putting this list together, B&T considered agency momentum, creative output, new business wins, industry profile and the quality and ambition of the leadership itself. We also drew on your nominations through our form (linked below) and our trusted third-party friends and advisors. This year, more than most the debate was a long and spirited one.
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Before we get to the list, it’s worth acknowledging the names that came agonisingly close. Honourable mentions go to: Jules Hall from The Hallway, Nick Hunter at Paper Moose, Laura Aldington from Supermassive, Paul McMillan at Kerfuffle, Tom Phillips from Connecting Plots, Tim Evans at 2045, Chiquita King and Ant Medler from Cocogun, Adrian Mills at ATime&Place, Paul Rhodes from Dig, Ben Lilley at HERO, Jess Wheeler from SICKDOGWOLFMAN and Matt Owen at Wieden+Kennedy.
If that seems like a laundry list of agencies, it is. As we said, the industry is thriving. But without any further ado, here’s our top 10.
10. Cheuk Chiang, group chief executive, Bastion
Cheuk Chiang stepped into the group CEO role at Bastion—the largest intendent agency in Australasia—in July 2025. It has hundreds of staff across 10 cities and five countries. It is a complex business to lead and he’s leading it well.
Over the past year, it’s won a number of important accounts including the full-service Geely account and Tabcorp’s creative account. It also renewed deals with Bunnings, L’Oreal and the Cancer Institute of NSW through competitive pitches.
In February, its New Zealand arm won KFC’s work across the ditch. Its work has been strong two as it won two Australian and New Zealand Effies apiece last year, including one Bronze for its ‘Every Vape Is A Hit To Your Health’ campaign for the Cancer Institute of NSW.
9. Phil Smith, founder & chief executive, Apparent
Phil Smith has spent years building culture at Apparent, and the numbers that are starting to tell a story are hard to argue with.
The past year marked the moment Apparent shifted from steady growth to acceleration. Its client list includes Optus Business, Afterpay and NSW Health, and it didn’t lose a single client was lost in 2025.
The creative output matched the commercial momentum. The standout was the Change Direction campaign for the Jilya Institute, addressing the Aboriginal suicide crisis and directed by Warwick Thornton of Photoplay.
It was the kind of work that’s culturally embedded and designed to change how a nation understands mental health solutions for Indigenous Australians. It earned Apparent B&T’s Award for Diversity and underlined that effectiveness and purpose don’t have to be competing priorities. It also picked up metal at the recent Cairns Crocodiles Awards.
Smith has built something that performs commercially, creates meaningfully and treats its people well. He has done so without making any of those things feel like a trade-off. That’s harder than it sounds.
8. Simon Joyce, founder & chief executive, Emotive
Simon Joyce has always believed that advertising should make people feel something. It’s the founding principle of Emotive. This year, that philosophy found one of its most high-profile expressions yet.
Its Google Pixel campaign starring Oscar Piastri tapped into the F1 driver’s famously deadpan demeanour. The campaign was smart, culturally timed and charming.
Beyond the work, Joyce has been building. The launch of Emotive Productions, its AI-integrated production arm, signals his thinking about where the agency needs to go and his willingness to invest ahead of the curve. He has also been bringing in the talent to reflects his ambitions for the indie agency.
Joyce is one of the more restless and creative minds running an independent agency in this country. That combination of intelligence, commercial instincts and curiosity about what advertising can be has set Emotive apart from the rest.
7. Jenny Lennon, co-founder & creative director, Born; David Coupland, co-founder & strategy director, Born
Jenny Lennon and David Coupland have quickly built one of the most impressive young agencies in the country with a distinctive voice, feel and approach to staff engagement.
The fact it is B&T’s reigning Independent Agency of the Year with Fewer Than 50 Employees is not a surprise.
It has been on a spate of new business wins over the past six months and its work, we feel, is really starting to hit its stride.
Case in point was its debut campaign for paddock-to-plate meat brand Our Cow. It’s impossible to ignore and will bring a wry smile to all but the most austere of viewers.
The team has grown to 15 staff and moved into Special’s former Surry Hills warehouse (more on that agency later) and opened a permanent Adelaide office, signalling an ambition that stretches well beyond Sydney.
It’s approach to staff engagement is as remarkable as it is unique. There’s precious little theatre. Staff start and leave—and we’re not falling for PR spin here—at 9am and leave at 5pm.
Born is only three years old. But it’s a precocious three year old and then some.
6. Jaimes Leggett, founding partner, Today The Brave
When Jaimes Leggett and his co-founders launched Today the Brave, they announced themselves to the industry with a full-page ad in The Australian. Four-and-a-bit years later, the agency is making just as much noise, only now the work is doing the talking.
Its standout creative moment recently was Wendy’s ‘Redhead Redemption’. It took one of Australia’s most loaded slang terms and reframed it entirely.
It won B&T’s Best Integrated Ad Campaign and is exactly the kind of work that Leggett has always insisted this agency should be capable of. The University of Sydney’s 175-year anniversary campaign and CarsGuide’s new brand platform further underlined a creative operation firing on all cylinders.
Today the Brave is no longer just a creative indie. It is a proper full-service operation, and Leggett has the client list to prove it. It includes Wendy’s, CarsGuide, IMB Bank, Elanco Pharmaceutical and Mark Anthony Brands among them.
It also marked another important step in its development over the past year, acquiring experiential and shopper marketing business The Zoo Republic, to round out its offerings in a compelling new manner for clients.
For an agency not yet five years old, its trajectory is to argue with.
5. Micah Walker, founder and chief creative, Bear Meets Eagle On Fire
Micah Walker has never been interested in making advertising that merely takes up space. He wants to make work that stops them cold. This past year, he has done exactly that.
Telstra’s ‘Better on a Better Network’ campaign claimed the Film Craft Grand Prix at Cannes Lions, the kind of recognition that puts an agency, and its founder, in a different conversation entirely.
The stop-motion series, is the fullest expression yet of what Walker has been building at Bear Meets Eagle on Fire since day one: work that leads with originality and an almost stubborn commitment to craft.
The Cannes Grand Prix was one of many awards. Walker took home eight Golds at the AWARD Awards, was named Individual Agency of the Year and claimed Creative Leader of the Year. It was a clean sweep that reflects the quality of the work and the culture he has created around it.
Bankwest sits among a client roster that signals a growing appetite from major brands for what Bear Meets Eagle on Fire offers.
Bear Meets Eagle on Fire remains deliberately small, fiercely independent and creatively uncompromising. There is no global network to fall back on, just a founder who backs his instincts, assembles the right people, and lets the work speak for itself.
4. Aden Hepburn, chief executive, Akcelo
Aden Hepburn takes fourth on this year’s list on the back of another year of strong momentum at Akcelo.
The headline win of 2025 was landing the global pitch for the Men’s Rugby World Cup 2027, producing the “Go All Out” campaign. It was the kind of work that announces an agency on the world stage.
That global ambition is central to his vision for Akcelo. In 2026, the agency opened a London office, adding another outpost to a footprint that now spans Sydney, Melbourne, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Bali and the UK.
Its client roster is filled out with major brands including McDonald’s, PepsiCo, OpenAI, Virgin Australia and Anytime Fitness.
Hepburn has long insisted that the most modern agency model should move at the speed of culture, and Akcelo’s AI and Automation Studio is perhaps the clearest expression of that philosophy.
The indie was recognised as B&T’s Branding, Design and CX Agency of the Year, as well as Campaign Asia’s Brand Experience Agency of the Year.
Few leaders in the independent sector are building with as much intent, or as much range.
3. Margie Reid, chief executive, Thinkerbell
Taking third place is Thinkerbell CEO Margie Reid, whose leadership continues to prove that creativity, effectiveness and purpose are not mutually exclusive.
In 2025, Thinkerbell delivered some of its most memorable. moments.
The agency helped transform Tooheys into a State of Origin cultural anthem, launched a major rebrand for TPG and secured Retail Food Group’s portfolio of brands following a competitive pitch. It also unveiled InclusivelyMade.ai, a platform designed to help make advertising more accessible and representative.
The agency’s work consistently demonstrated the power of creative thinking to drive real-world outcomes. Thinkerbell showed a rare ability to combine commercial impact with cultural relevance and social good. For instance, its work for Vegemite helped introduce the iconic brand to a new generation of Australian families.
Under Reid’s leadership, Thinkerbell continued to collect industry recognition, in the form of six Cairns Crocodiles, an Effie Australia award and an AWARD award, just to name a few.
All this was executed while continuing its investment in sustainability through renewable energy initiatives and a pathway to net zero. Reid has built a business that consistently proves creativity can solve commercial challenges while creating value beyond the bottom line.
2. Chris Howatson, founder & chief executive, Howatson+Company
Chris Howatson takes his place among this year’s leading independent agency leaders after steering Howatson+Company through another period of remarkable growth and creative excellence.
The indie celebrated its fifth year in business by delivering one of the strongest performances in the market. It added 26 new clients in 2025 alone with some major mentions being Vodafone, Myer, Endeavour Group and The Australian Financial Review.
The agency’s push into the world of AI with its Plus Also Studio has also proven to be lucrative for the business and a hit with clients.
The momentum is still continuing with the agency securing the highly coveted CommBank creative account yesterday. Howie can consider himself very unlucky to not have taken the top spot this year.
Howatson’s commitment to producing distinctive work without a defined “house style” was evident across a standout portfolio. Selleys’ ‘If You Can Take It, It’s Yours’ became one of the year’s most talked-about campaigns, generating tens of millions of views and claiming the OMA Grand Prix.
Its incendiary work for Vodafone has also caught the eye in a category more competitive than ever, too.
Beyond creative output, Howatson has built a growing reputation for both innovation and impact, cementing the business as one of Australia’s defining independent agency success stories.
1. Lindsey Evans, global partner & chief executive; Cade Heyde, global partner, Special
Claiming the top spot this year are Special’s global partners Lindsey Evans and Cade Heyde. Together their leadership has underpinned another extraordinary year for one of Australasia’s most influential creative agencies.
Special continued its growth trajectory in 2025, adding 11 new accounts including Warner Bros., Honda and Jack Link’s, while expanding major relationships with Uber, Uber Eats and PepsiCo.
Under Evans and Heyde’s stewardship, the Sydney office has become a critical creative hub for the network, leading work across Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the US.
The pair oversaw some of the year’s most talked-about campaigns. Bonds’ collaboration with Robert Irwin became a global cultural moment, generating mass attention in Australia and the US. Uber Eats continued to deliver standout work through its platform, from Super Bowl campaigns to its election day sausage sizzle activation.
Alongside the work, Evans and Heyde strengthened their leadership bench with four senior appointments and helped guide Special to major industry recognition.
Its accolades are almost too numerous to list here, though one does stand head-and-shoulders above the rest: B&T’s Agency of the Year 2025.
Few leaders have shaped the creative conversation quite as decisively over the past few years.
