Brent Smart, Micah Walker, Michael Ritchie On Why Partnership, Trust, Production Budget Fuel Telstra’s Dominance

​Brent Smart has transformed a creatively tired telecommunications company into the moment’s most creatively prolific and successful brand in Australia.

He has reimagined what an agency model can look like for a business as big as Telstra (the largest telco in the country, with a market capitalisation of more than AUD$50 billion), and reshaped the category: Telstra’s two biggest competitors, Vodafone and Optus, have gone to pitch and changed their rosters since Telstra’s work gathered momentum.

And he has done it within two years, by centring and refusing to compromise on creative excellence.

Speaking to LBB, Brent said that it has meant prioritising his production budget, and dispelling the myth that big clients need a big agency.

“You think you need a big agency and all the big resources that they can manage,” he said.

“So you trade off creativity. I didn't want to do that. I wanted small, independent creativity [and] I wanted them leading, creatively.”

Soon after starting in the role three years ago, he commenced a pitch process that resulted in the formation of +61, a model comprised of three agencies. There’s indie hot shop Bear Meets Eagle on Fire, the jewel in the crown, TBWA, and OMD. +61 took shape, and got started, two years ago.

“We created a unique partnership where the delivery and the strategy comes with TBWA, and that really supports [Bear’s] creative firepower and lets them lead something as big as Telstra. And then OMD comes in, because they're part of Ominicom with TBWA, they come in a completely integrated wave. And so we've got creative and media really integrated.”

Brent added people can erroneously confuse the arrangement as a bespoke Telstra agency.

“They're still their own agencies, just coming together in a unique way,” he said.“I wanted at the very heart of that agency model, an independent creative agency. And I think the best one in this country has been Bear [Meets Eagle On Fire].”

Trust drives the collaboration. Brent had worked with Bear before during his time at IAG, when the indie launched insurer ROLLIN’ and worked on NRMA projects.

“You’ve got to have trust between clients and agencies if you're going to do good work,” Brent said. “You just need to trust each other, and you need to provide trust. Not just in their recommendations, but also in the way [they] work, and to not get in the way.

“It definitely helps if you've made a few things together, and you've solved a few problems together, and you've found yourself in those situations where you're really relying on each other.”

Brent knows Bear’s founder and CCO, Micah Walker, will have always reviewed “all the work” against his “very high standards”.

“If it gets to the room, I know Micah is happy to make it. That takes all the pressure out of the creative presentation, because I know he likes all the work, and I know whichever [idea] I pick, I can't make the wrong decision.”

He’s never worked with someone who cares for craft in the way Micah does. And he knows he needs to honour his side of the trust bargain by buying into a creative idea 100%.

“When you make your mind up that this is the idea [you’re] going to get behind, you buy it completely,” Brent said.

“You get behind it, and you support it, and you protect it … as opposed to half [of] it, and then you change it, and then somebody Frankensteins it, and the idea starts becoming something else.

“That’s not a way to ensure trust from creative people, because you're not really buying it … as a client, you [have to] believe in it. You [have to] love it, and buy it completely.”

That trust, Micah told LBB, is critical, earned over time, and marks the start of the shared ambition that powers partnerships.

“It takes a lot of work and commitment,” Micah explained.

“When you deliver on the small and big stuff, you build trust. We care about everything we do, which is more than gets shared in a press release.

“Finding the right partners from the start is the key. Do you share values? Do you share an understanding of what great looks like? Then, of course, with successes, you build a level of trust that allows you more confidence to push further past the easy stuff.

Brent and Micah also praised Australian production company Revolver as a partner which “cares really deeply about the craft.”

​The Cannes Palme d’Or-winning business has led many Telstra productions -- from the Cannes Grand Prix-earning ‘Better on a Better Network’ to a story of a travelling cobbler aimed at Telstra’s business customers, last year’s Christmas ad starring a donkey, and this year’s cliche-busting spot heroing connections of all kinds and starring a girl and her ghostly friend.​

The acclaimed Steve Rogers has directed the latter three projects.

“There’s a great working relationship between Micah, Michael [Ritchie, Revolver co-owner], and Steve Rogers where there's lots of trust, also a level of taste between all of us, which is important,” Brent said.

That taste extends to doubling down on his investment in production. He’s opted for stop-motion on multiple occasions, a papercrafted out-of-home roll out featuring 40 special builds and 300 assets, paying for Steve Buscemi, and giving films the air and care to land a story. That’s a rejection of the “worrying trend” to lean into AI to achieve production scale and efficiency.

“The production budget is the most important budget, because that bit touches customers -- it’s the tangible thing you're making,” Brent asserted.

“If you produce something great, you don't need to spend as much media behind it. The production budget can be such an important multiplier that makes work really stand out in being more creative [and] more effective.

“There's a bunch of marketers who probably think production is something to minimise, and it should be a certain percentage of the media budget, and it's about efficiency. And now we'll point AI at that to make it even more efficient. I just think that's the wrong way to think about production.

“That's not me being economically or fiscally irresponsible. Make it once, make it beautifully, and you can run it for longer because you don't spend as much media on it. People will start sharing it for you.”

That’s what happened with the animated film launching Telstra’s brand platform, ‘Wherever We Go’ last year. The ‘Telstra walk’ and whistle went viral on TikTok, permeating culture, sparking 4,600 TikToks with a combined 16+ million views. The walk has been mimicked to celebrate a try in the NRL, a goal in the AFL, and Brent “loved it most when one of my son's mates did it after an under 12s soccer goal.” It also led to Telstra grabbing over 90% of telco category searches on the platform.

Micah added that some of the “best things” he’s ever made were done with Michael Ritchie and Revolver, and that their history is “deep and personal”.

“We have an honesty and directness between us that comes from wanting to make better things,” Micah said.

“Each new production is just as important … there’s always a pressure to deliver something better.

“The expectation is really high, so you have to be able to rely on one another to do their part. That can be intense -- higher expectations go both ways, but I also think that comes from caring harder, so it’s healthy tension and shared ambition, rather than fear.”

Revolver’s Michael Ritchie recalled first meeting Brent and Micah when they held earlier agency roles.

“Those initial projects with these two people left an indelible mark on me; they both cared so much about the work,” he told LBB.

From that point onwards, holding tight to truth and trust has contributed to a deeply meaningful working relationship, which he never takes for granted.

“Important relationships make you work harder each time you set off on a project,” he continued. “It's bettering the outcome from the previous project [and] working harder than we did in the project before that and before that and before that.

“I know I can speak for Steve Rogers, my business partner, when I say we feel more pressure each time we work with Brent and Micah -- it's this pressure and desire to prove that we are the right choice that helps make the outcomes rewarding for everyone.”

For Micah, selecting brand and production partners alike means seeking “decency, honesty, and ambition”.

“It takes a village to make something special, and that means a shared commitment to push past what’s easy from everyone involved. It’s harder to make better work, it just is, but it’s worth it. I trust our clients to back and support better ideas, and we take the responsibility to deliver on that ambition really seriously.

“If you don’t share an ambition or if you have different ideas of what great is, it’s hard. You’ll never make anything great if you don’t trust and support one another, so find a partner that shares your values and then create the room and permission to do better things.

“Once you experience that kind of partnership, it’s all you ever want.”

But Michael also knows Revolver isn’t +61’s only production partner. The model has also worked with the likes of Smuggler (Steve Buscemi’s ‘Scammageddon’), Nexus Studios (on the recent stop-motion work for Telstra Enterprise), and Riff Raff (on ‘Wherever We Go’).

“If we ever assumed we would get the project from the outset, we would be mistaken,” Michael said.

“We are not really in the rarified position to select our agency and client partners. However, [when] we do engage with our partners on a project basis, we pitch super hard for that project.

“In the case of Brent and Micah and the work for Telstra, we pitch hard against other companies for the projects that we get. We certainly don't win them all. We have to earn that win and to be honest, it's that process that gives our approach a mandate to execute within. It's the lack of presumption that keeps the relationship vital.”

Working together over a long period of time, Michael said, means you can get “straight into the 'making'", and not be weighed down by “politics” or “process”.

“[It] develops a focused shorthand,” he explained, transcending the “first date mentality".

“Brent and Micah or Telstra and Bear set out to do work that truly makes an impact and in doing so, is proven to be genuinely world-class, [which ensures] the brand and the intentions of each piece of work actually do have an efficacy, in that the audience really does connect to, stick with, and will respond to the work.

“Brent has the distinct understanding of the 'making' process to know what aspects are needed to really land … and he consequently doesn't sweat the details.

“Micah and the entire team at Bear look after the work with such extreme care that there is not a stone unturned in the process of making it.”

The studio’s work for Telstra has placed Bear firmly on the world-stage, and made it the envy of indies (and network agencies) across the globe. This year, Optus appointed an agency village consisting of Droga5, Accenture Song Media, Apparent, and BRX. And Vodafone built an indie shortlist comprised entirely of indies before choosing Howatson+Company.

Telstra’s approach has also earned the unprompted praise of global OAG CEOTroy Ruhanen, who has replicated the +61 model when pitching other business, and Omnicom Oceania CEO Nick Garrett, who told LBB he will ensure the model he’s building remains open for indies to plug into. In fact, Omnicom’s local partnership with indies will increase, he said.

“They're actually transforming that business,” Nick said of the efforts of his agencies, TBWA and OMD, along with Bear. “And it's not just from a marketing perspective. It has [a] far broader impact.

“You can see that strategic and creative energy, and it becomes a movement. It's contagious. Confidence builds confidence ... it's extraordinary to see.”

Ex-media agency boss and SKINGRAPHICA founder Mat Baxter also organically mentioned Brent as a best-in-class example of a CMO who exemplifies “the power of marketing done well.”​

The Telstra CMO is clever in his media plan, and commitment to creative clarity (take the simple out-of-home as part of the ‘Scamageddon’ campaign, or the ‘Four Bars’ work), because “he doesn’t care about optics because he’s got the confidence to not care about them.” He has also been a proud advocate for the brand feeling the same, versus looking the same.

“The brand doesn't always need to look the same,” Mat confirms. “The brand needs to resonate with the audience in the environment that it's being presented in.

“You can see in the [Telstra] work there's clearly respect for the expertise of the partners.

“You can see the partners are enjoying the creative freedom ... you can see that they're getting the best out of their partners. That's not a coincidence. That's because you've got someone there leading who's got an agency sensibility, who's, dare I say it, doing something quite simple, which is just treating agencies with a bit of respect. And so it works. When it's done, it works.”

Revolver’s Michael said that respect and partnership has taught him three things: “Work harder for each other than you did the time before;” be “honest through the whole process” and “never presume”; and “never take what you have for granted.”