Today The Brave Launches Gallery Brave, Hosts Shepard Fairey Exhibition to Prove “Sales Happen On The Street, In The Shop”

Today The Brave has opened a street-level retail space dubbed Gallery Brave to prove sales don’t just happen in boardrooms, but “on the street, in the shop”, and position the indie as being “as much uptown as we are downtown”, “as much vinyl as we are Spotify.”

On Wednesday evening, the agency opened the doors to the shopfront, located on Sydney’s bustling Elizabeth Street in Hibernian House. The opening exhibition came just a month after the agency moved into its new home upstairs in the graffiti-strewn Hibernian, but CEO Jaimes Leggett said the Gallery “hasn't happened by chance, this has been in the pipeline for years.” 

“By its very nature, commercial creativity is not one thing. We launched as an art gallery today, but we're selling merch, we're selling records, we're selling books, we're selling booze, we're selling art,” he told LBB at the gallery’s opening last night.

“We're in the business of commercial creativity, every single client that comes to us is coming to us for one single reason – they might articulate it differently, but fundamentally it's the same thing, they're all looking for growth. Invariably, growth requires sales. So we are in the business of sales.

“I think too often that advertising sales is the domain of the boardroom, and sales don't happen in boardrooms. Sales happen on the ground, on the street, in the shop. If we're in the business of commercial creativity, we should be selling stuff. We should be experts at selling stuff on the ground.”

​Having a retail space means the agency can make and sell things beyond campaigns, and contribute to the building’s creative culture. Jaimes wanted to “remind people that work in our business of what actual sales look like. 

“A person walks in off the street, you've got to make some chat, you've got to understand what their motivation is, what they're interested in. You've got to understand what you've got, you have to then position the thing you've got as an answer to the need that they have. That is the fundamental skill of advertising, and this is the purest form.”

Located right by Central Station, plus the likes of Canva, News Corp, and Woolworths, Gallery Brave is not in short supply of foot traffic. 

“What this isn't is an agency folly on a back street somewhere. What this is, is a high-street retail footprint designed to engage everyday Australians doing the thing that everyday Australians do,” said Jaimes.

Gallery Brave’s launch came in the form of a Shepard Fairey exhibition, an American artist, activist, and founder of OBEY Clothing. His collection, ‘50 Shades Of Black’, features album cover designs inspired by the 12-inch record cover format. 

Launching with an exhibition of this particular series – each piece of which was for sale – was “not by chance”. Vinyl is “a big part of our agency culture,” Jaimes said, and a way for “the first show to connect to the agency and make it a bit more personal.” The agency was selling a curated selection of vinyls on the night, in addition to ‘first edition’ Gallery Brave t-shirts.

​“Shepard Fairey is the most prolific street artist. His whole proposition has been around, if I can make something famous because people see it on the street, they will desire it. 

“Fundamentally, that's, at its most basic, what we're doing in advertising. We're making people see things and as a result, desire that thing when they see it in store. So Shepard Fairey felt like the right place for us to start.

“A big part of Today The Brave’s culture is we feel like we are an agency of juxtaposition – we're as much uptown as we are downtown, we're as much vinyl as we are Spotify. We ask all of our clients, all of our partners, all of our staff, to bring us a piece of vinyl that best represents them. So there's also a bit of simpatico.”

​Those who walk past the gallery’s street-facing windows won’t get the same view for long.  “The beauty of” the space is its ability to shift and change. “This space is designed to be organic,” Jaimes confirmed.

“We have enough humility to go, ‘We don't know what we don't know’. We're really interested in the journey, we're open minded to what it is. We've got a plan over the next few months, and then I guess we'll get to the new year, and then we'll think, right, what have we learned?”