IN:WA

It was fantastic to bring our community together yesterday afternoon for our first event of the year - Owners & Leaders Informal. Since our final event of 2024 (the Member Christmas Lunch), our board has been workshopping positives, challenges and feedback from last year, and planning solutions and our focus for 2025. The purpose of yesterday's event was to give members a summary of the board's finding and directions, prompt discussion and gather feedback. Thanks to the IN:WA chair, Jeff Champtaloup from braincells, for taking this group through our 2024 findings, and plans for 2025. These include: 💪 Membership Consolidation - Managing healthy growth while delivering real value for members. 🎤 O&L Assembly - Divide these cornerstone events into smaller groups to increase the trust, sharing and learning within these groups. 🎓 IN:Learning - Maintain Learning offerings, with a focus on the Owners and Leaders of member companies. 📣 IN:WA Information - Publish and share the information we are gathering from our members, that provide great insights into the indie WA commercial and creative communications sector. 💬 Member Driven - Extend opportunities for our members to contribute, share and drive improvement in our organisation and community. With 2 new members signing on in 2025 already, and an exciting schedule of improved events planned, the year ahead is looking extremely positive. Thank you very much to the members who support us by showing up, contributing, sharing, participating in the learning, and bringing great energy to our events and community. The independent communications and creative companies that make up our community include braincells, Beautiful Pictures, KIOSK Creative Services, Bonfire, Hatchet, Distl, equ, Rhythm Films, Social Meteor , White Chalk Road, The Marketing Room, Daisy Digital , Monday Media, Word Of Mouth Agency, Humaan, Berlin, And/And, Block, Clarity Communications, Bang Digital Australia, Dapth, Likeable Creative, Anthologie, Slick Design Pty Ltd, Juicebox, Workhouse, Studio Orange, Legion Brand Lab and more ➕➕➕ New members welcome in 2025!

One final look back into the recent rear-view and our first event of the year - Owners & Leaders Informal. IN:WA is built on the people, and those people are the owners and leaders of WA's independent commercial and creative communications businesses. That means advertising, branding, design, digital, PR, production, content, copy, technology, development, and all the things that make up our commercial comms landscape in 2025. What IN:WA is 100% about is facilitating connection and collaboration between these people, across a wide variety of business, agency and company types. The objective? To inspire peer-to-peer sharing and learning in an environment of mutual trust and respect. That's where the magic happen for IN:WA members. Our Owners & Leaders Informal and Owners & Leaders Assembly events are the cornerstones of what we are here to do, and our most effective way of delivering value based on our 3 pillars - Share. Learn. Represent. If you're leading a WA indie in our sector, and this sounds good to you, please get in touch. We are welcoming new members as we grow our voice, influence and impact in 2025. Big thanks to our chair, Jeff Champtaloup, and the 2025 IN:WA board members Ivona Gaspar, Mark Braddock, Claire Aindow, John Petkovic, Ben De Jonge, Nanda Gunnink and Ryan Khong. Volunteers one and all and committed to our indie comms community. Making up that community are these companies - braincells, Beautiful Pictures, KIOSK Creative Services, Bonfire, Hatchet, Distl, equ, Rhythm Films, Social Meteor , White Chalk Road, The Marketing Room, Daisy Digital , Monday Media, Word Of Mouth Agency, Humaan, Berlin, Block, Clarity Communications, Bang Digital Australia, Dapth, Likeable Creative, Anthologie, Slick Design Pty Ltd, Juicebox, Workhouse, Studio Orange, Legion Brand Lab and more

Our thanks and gratitude goes out to the individuals and companies who make IN:WA the unique and energetic indie comms community that it is. We had a great turn out last night at Lawson Flats for our first event of the year - Owners & Leaders Informal. The purpose of this event format is to gather our community together to update them on our learnings and plans, and to get their feedback and input. After a year of exceptional growth in 2024, the board's focus for 2025 is consolidation and driving value for members, with a laser focus on our core pillars - Learn. Share. Represent. Our chair, Jeff Champtaloup spoke to the group about our experiences and learnings in 2024, and our plans for the year ahead. We're grateful for the questions, suggestions and ideas that came from our members, and pride ourselves on being a member-driven organisation. It was fantastic to have members attend last night, representing so many of WA's greatest independent communications and creative companies including braincells, Block, Dapth, Likeable Creative, Slick Design Pty Ltd, Juicebox, Workhouse, Studio Orange, Beautiful Pictures, KIOSK Creative Services, Hatchet, Distl, equ, Social Meteor , White Chalk Road, The Marketing Room, Daisy Digital , Monday Media, Bonfire, Word Of Mouth Agency, And/And and more. We continue to welcome new members in 2025, so if our community appeals to you, please get in touch. 🙏

👀🔎👀🔎👀 Shall we play a little game of spotto? We’re looking forward to welcoming these members to Lawson Flats for 2025’s first event - Owners & Leaders Informal. Our thanks and gratitude goes to our diverse and energetic community, comprised of the Owners and Leaders of WA’s commercial communication companies. Thank you Jeff Champtaloup , Ivona Gaspar, Mark Braddock , John Petkovic, Nanda Gunnink, Ryan Khong, Claire Aindow, Ben De Jonge, Richard Berney, Malcolm MacLean, Kate Downie, Tanya Sim, Tom Wilson Daniel Gouvignon, Ryan Wilson Steve Poulson, Rene LeMerle, Pierce Ericson, Phil Allen, Paul Dean, Kelly-Anne Davis, Tara Lyle Lyle etc.

💬🍾💬🍾💬🍾💬 We are excited to announce that our very first event of 2025 is happening on Wednesday February 19th, at Lawson Flats. We're kicking off this year's event schedule with an 'Owners & Leaders Informal' - While the name (and these photos) say it all, these member-only gatherings give our indie agency people a chance to mingle and swap stories. Our O&L Informals also give our board the opportunity to update members, prompt discussions and gather feedback in an, well, informal environment. We're looking forward to sharing key plans for 2025, and revealing some changes and improvements to our signature events. In our mission to build an active and vocal community of independent agency owners and leaders, we're always looking for ways to increase the value and accessibility of our learning, sharing and representation pillars, and find new and better ways to deliver on them. We look forward to welcoming owners and leaders from our member indie agencies including - braincells, Block, Clarity Communications, Dapth, Bang Digital Australia, Likeable Creative, Anthologie, Slick Design Pty Ltd, Juicebox, Workhouse, Studio Orange, Beautiful Pictures, KIOSK Creative Services, Digital Hitmen, Hatchet, Distl, equ, Rhythm Films, Social Meteor , Start Digital, White Chalk Road, The Marketing Room, Daisy Digital , Monday Media, Bonfire, Word of Mouth Agency, Humaan, Berlin, And/And and more!

2024 was a super positive year for IN:WA members, agencies, individuals, events, and our community as a whole. Being a community-based organisation, with a focus on sharing and learning, we tapped our members to get their thoughts on what their 2024 experiences of IN:WA were like. If you're wondering, 2025 is looking even better, and we are still welcoming new members, at least for the time being... (size isn't the most important thing for us) Big thanks to Jeff Champtaloup from braincells, Nanda Gunnink from Studio Orange and Dean Hunt from Chapter Brand Leadership for sharing your POVs in this little vox pop video.

We thought this piece, focussed exclusively on independent agencies around the world, is perfect for our indie agency community right here in WA. There are some fascinating insights and POVs on the power of independence in the creative and commercial communications sector. ✊💯👏 Our thanks to the author Brittney Rigby at LBBonline - Little Black Book - Well played!

From the IN:WA board members to our incredible community of indie commercial communications agencies, THANK YOU! 2024 has been an amazing year of new members, events, sharing, learning and representation of our sector and the people and businesses that make it great. 2025 looks exciting for our members and the broader indie community in WA and we’re looking forward to the new year and our first events. Until then, we wish everyone Happy Holidays and an epic new year.

Our thanks to Campaign Brief for sharing the good news of a fantastic year of growth for IN:WA, celebrated last week with a Christmas Lunch, exceptionally well attended by the vast majority of our member cohort of 35 WA indie agencies. Please take a look and share the love! (You could even play a game of 'Spotto'!) Our thanks also to these wonderful WA independent commercial communications businesses that make up our membership community - braincells, Block, Clarity Communications, Bang Digital Australia, Likeable Creative, Anthologie, Bonfire, Humaan, Slick Design Pty Ltd, Juicebox, Workhouse, Dux Digital, Ideology, Studio Orange, Beautiful Pictures, KIOSK Creative Services, Digital Hitmen, Hatchet, Distl, equ, Rhythm Films, Social Meteor , Start Digital, White Chalk Road, Dapth, The Marketing Room, Daisy Digital , Monday Media, Word Of Mouth Agency, Berlin, And/And

🎄🎄🤶🎅🎁🎄🌲🎁🎅🎅🌲🌲🎁🎁🤶 Yesterday afternoon, the owners and leaders of independent, WA-owned agencies gathered together for the IN:WA celebration of Christmas and the year that has been 2024. Whether it has been a year of ups, downs, or a mixture of the two, our community is here to help members navigate challenges and reach objectives thanks to our culture of sharing, learning and representation. Our group this year was around three times the size of our gathering at the end of 2023. This is testament to the growth we have achieved in membership, and the engaged and invested individuals that contribute their time and insights to make this community fantastic and unique in the Western Australian creative and communications sector. With 36+ member agencies, we welcomed well over 60 individuals to The Stables Bar in the Perth CBD, and the positive energy in the room was palpable. Our thanks goes to the chair of our board, Jeff Champtaloup, and 2024 board members Ivona Gaspar, Mark Braddock, John Petkovic, Claire Aindow, Nanda Gunnink and Ben De Jonge. Without these good people, our roster of events, activations and member support initiates would not be possible. On behalf of IN:WA, our board, members and community, we thank all of you for helping us achieve a wonderful year in 2024, wish you all a Happy Christmas and a strong and positive start to the new year for our whole sector. If you are looking for a community of peers in the WA indie agency sector, come and join us in 2025. Our agency members now include Bonfire, Braincells, Block, Clarity Communications, Bang Digital Australia, The Cut, Likeable Creative, Anthologie, Slick Design Pty Ltd, Juicebox, Workhouse, Dux Digital, Ideology, Studio Orange, Beautiful Pictures, KIOSK Creative Services, Digital Hitmen, Hatchet, Distl, equ, Rhythm Films, Social Meteor , Start Digital, White Chalk Road, Dapth, The Marketing Room, Daisy Digital, Monday Media, Word of Mouth Agency, Humaan, Berlin, And/And and more