Supermassive, one of Australia’s most popular independent creative agencies turned one last week.
An entire year within the commercial creativity sector has presented founders and ex-network agency big guns, Jon Austin, Simone Gupta and Laura Aldington with all the usual challenges and triumphs plus a few extras.
During their first year, Supermassive has worked with brands such as P&O, Knotfest and are supporters of 36 Months, an initiative led by industry legend, Rob Gallazzuo.
Together the three have formed a creative agency that ‘makes people want stuff by making stuff people actually want.’ During their first year as an agency, they’ve developed a solid foundation built on strong relationships with partners, and aren’t afraid to push the boundaries of creativity. With their combined skills in strategy, creative and PR, Supermassive is a force to be reckoned with.
LBB’s Casey Martin spoke to Jon Austin about revelling in the cheesy victories and choosing kindness over ruthlessness.
LBB> Congratulations on your first year! How has Supermassive developed over the past 12 months?
Jon> Thank you! The short answer is ‘bloody quickly’.
The slightly longer answer is that we started Supermassive with a point of view about how brands needed to adapt to a changing consumer landscape, and about how agencies needed to evolve to better partner with them.
We believe brands need to be grounded in simple but robust strategy, which should then be brought to life with discipline and consistency.
We also believe that brands who aren’t in the fortunate position of outspending their competitors need to turn their attention to outsmarting them instead, and this is where our ability to amplify brands through not just paid, but also through (really thoughtful, strategically-driven) non-traditional and earned creativity allows them to have a disproportionate impact.
And finally we believe that what clients need right now are super senior, hands-on partners who can build them the teams they need with agility and flexibility, rather than be constrained by more traditional agency structures and the talent they have within their four walls.
We’ve been thrilled to find ourselves in so many different conversations with brands who share our point of view on all three fronts, and we’ve developed some really fantastic relationships, with such varied scope.
We’ve been positioning, launching, relaunching, naming, and redesigning brands, and taking them to market in a heady mix of owned, paid and of course, non traditional and earned channels. We’ve been working in travel, tourism, fashion, sustainability, mental health, toys, fintech, fast food, retail, health and wellbeing, hospitality, and entertainment/media. We’re making ads, documentaries, events, initiatives, products, social movements and more.
It’s been fast and hectic and so much fun.
LBB> What were some of the challenges you faced and overcame?
Jon> There’s no doubt from a macro perspective – whatever the shape or size of your business – it’s a tough industry to be in right now, and we make no bones about the fact that starting any business comes with challenges. But most of ours were solved by the kindness and generosity of other people and even other agencies in an industry all too often described as ruthless and bloodthirsty. So, to all of you legends that gave us great advice, great champagne, words of support, invaluable connections, introductions, and even some office space over the last year, thank you so much. We’ll be forever paying it forward, for sure.
And there is something to be said for being both small and seasoned. We’ve experienced enough highs and lows in our respective careers to feel somewhat more confident navigating them, and we’re small/new enough to be building ourselves for the current climate rather than trying to adapt to it.
Oh, also figuring out how to make email signatures. That was a real fuck around.
LBB> What has been your proudest moment as a company?
Jon> It feels painfully smug to say ‘there are so many’, but honestly, I think that’s the case for any start up. Everything we’ve done in this first year has been a first for us, so every milestone feels like something worth celebrating.
The day we decided to take a swing at our own thing.
The day we announced Supermassive to the world.
The day you wrote that killer article about us with the even better headline, ‘How a Supermassive wave crashed into the industry’.
The day our merch dropped and we had emails from all over the world from strangers asking to buy it.
The day we won our first client.
Every single time since that a client has placed their trust in us – we never take that, or them, for granted.
The day we moved out of our first unofficial office in the Double Bay library and into our second unofficial office (with less books and more pinball machines) in Finch’s basement.
The day we moved into our first official studio space and put a whopping big, hot pink Supermassive sign up on the wall.
The day we put out our first piece of work.
The day we got the results back from that campaign and saw how unprecedented its effectiveness was.
The day we hired Bianca. The day we hired Adam. The day we realised we also got two awesome office dogs as part of the deal.
The day we got shortlisted as Mumbrella Emerging Agency of the Year after just 10 months.
The day not one, but two of our clients invited us to join their advisory boards.
The day we started investing in our own ideas and projects.
It sounds cheesy, but ultimately, we just feel really proud that we get to do what we love with people we love, have a ton of fun in the process, and get paid for the privilege.
LBB> How have your own roles changed and developed as the needs of the business/industry changed?
Jon> Our roles have changed both as a reflection of what clients were telling us they needed and what we individually wanted from this new chapter.
We’ve all held senior c-suite roles in bigger agencies over quite a few years, and the reality is, in those roles, your focus is often getting pulled away from solving client problems because you are so busy solving your own.
We wanted to build a different type of studio that allowed us to get back to doing both what we love, and are happily also really good at, which is getting really deep into the client’s world and applying the diversity of our collective experience where it can have a disproportionate impact.
Our greatest joy has been getting back to the coalface, but with a depth of experience that makes it a real pleasure to be back on the tools. Two of our client partners have recently asked us to join their advisory boards, which feels like such a wonderful testament to the level of advice and value they feel we can offer.
LBB> Talk us through Supermassive’s vision, making people want stuff by making stuff people actually want. What does that mean to you?
Jon> At its heart it’s about effectiveness.
Everyone knows the dire stats about advertising and audience. People have never had so much choice in what they engage with, and they’ve never been less engaged in the vast majority of advertising. For an industry that prides itself on understanding its audience, we’ve been willfully ignoring a whole bunch of signs from them that they’re just not interested in how we’ve traditionally done things.
We often refer to a stat by WARC, uncovered during their deep dive into the world’s most effective campaigns, which says “the most effective ads in the world no longer look like ads”.
That quote really guides us.
Our vision means we play in the places and spaces our audience do. We strategically explore their communities and fandoms and passion points, and use creativity to promote ideas that take the shape of stuff they love. If you’re going to do that, you have to play by their rules.
And if you can be authentic and respectful to those cultural intersections, effectiveness follows.
Sometimes people think that our vision is anti-paid media, but of course, that’s not the case at all. Paid can and often does play an invaluable part in amplifying creativity. But we say if you can’t outspend (and most brands can’t), you have to outsmart in order to grow. So we believe in ideas that can transcend paid and not just survive, but thrive, in a range of paid, owned and earned channels.
LBB> You’ve done so much more than just the traditional commercial creativity, you’ve been involved with 36 Months, partnered with Knotfest, how do you balance these partnerships and foster these relationships? How have they affected the way Supermassive works?
Jon> At Supermassive, our entire model is built on the strength of our partnerships.
Despite what our name suggests, we have no desire to be a large company. Instead, we operate with a small core team across strategy, creative and account management, and bring together teams of diverse specialists and partners with deep category knowledge in whatever project we’re undertaking.
Using a hub and spoke model doesn’t just mean we can efficiently assemble proper world-class teams on every single project. It also means we can tap into these experts and guides who can help us navigate unfamiliar territory (which is exactly where we want to play).
It’s how we’ve ended up involved in so many fascinating and differently-shaped projects, from documentary making at Knotfest, to social initiatives like 36 Months, to new models of sustainable tourism for a tourism body, to working with the one of the world’s most iconic brands on the other side of the planet, to creating new school songs, to launching a new product with Australia’s largest bank, to diving into health and wellbeing innovation.
We’ve got so many exciting projects on the runway – so wildly different from anything we’ve ever done in our careers – that are only possible because of our ambitious clients and our specialist partnership model.
LBB> You say you make stuff that people actually want, what do you do outside of the 9-5 to nurture your creativity and ensure that when you come to work, you are ready to make the stuff people actually want?
Jon> At a founder level, a significant part of what makes us work so well together are the huge differences in what inspires us. Sim loves ice baths and retreats. Laura loves podcasts and reads widely and avidly. I love heavy metal and scary movies. It means we’re always exposing each other and the broader team to very different experiences and inspiration points, both in and out of work.
Some work brilliantly, like Sim’s breath-work course. Others less so, like my terrifying Japanese horror escape room outing. But they all put creative fuel in the tank, and help us step outside our own bubbles and biases to more effectively apply creativity for our audience.
We also recently made our own signature scent for friends of the studio to celebrate a year spent “Running on Fumes” – an eclectic mix of the leather in our first ‘office’ in the Double Bay Library, the Earl Grey tea that fuels us through the afternoons, the rosé that has fuelled a few evenings and the smoke from the laptop that eventually combusted from having 14,000 open tabs.
LBB> What does the future hold for Supermassive?
Jon> Honestly? More of the same would be great.
More milestones to celebrate.
More challenging, exciting, modern projects that inspire us and get us thinking about things in very different ways.
More brilliant partnerships.
More headlines for our clients.
More chats with you.
More signature fragrances.
More merch drops.
More metal festivals.
More office dogs.
More fun.
(Could probably do with less of Sim’s ice baths tbh)
