15 Creative-First Agencies We're Watching in 2022

Each year, Adweek honors a handful of agencies with accolades, with this year's honorees including The Martin Agency as U.S. Agency of the Year, TBWA as the Global Agency of the Year, Publicis Italy as International Agency of the Year and Mischief @ No Fixed Address as our Breakthrough Agency of the Year. This year, Adweek's Agencies and Creativity teams discussed which creative agencies we have our eyes on in 2022. The why for these agencies vary—some are up-and-coming new shops poised to make a splash, while others are legacy shops that are positioned to potentially have a big 2022. There is one common thread among nearly all these agencies: They've found new ways to effectively tap into culture to connect brands with consumers in organic ways that consumers embrace. 360i With TikTok growing ever more powerful as a marketing tool, one of the agencies leading the way for top tier brands is 360i. The agency is responsible for the two most-followed brands on TikTok—Oreo and Sour Patch Kids—and counts 14 Mondelēz brands in total as clients. Overall, 360i worked for 20 new clients in 2021, for which it has custom service models dependent on the brands' needs. Its most notable work this year comes for Oreo, as it handled the entire execution of its Pokémon Oreos, which outsold Oreo's limited-edition Lady Gaga and Game of Thrones cookies. One piece of work to watch in 2022 is when 360i will attempt to make Preparation H into a digital superstar. —Jameson Fleming Arts & Letters Richmond, Va., is a hotbed of creative talent, and Arts & Letters is a newer piece of the creative puzzle there. The agency launched in 2017 with veterans of TBWA, Wieden+Kennedy, The Martin Agency and VCU Brandcenter alums, with Google as its launch client. The agency has grown exponentially since then, landing on Adweek’s Fastest Growing Agencies list the last two years. The agency still counts Google as a client but has added ESPN, NBC News and regional clients. The agency operates with a collective entrepreneurial spirit and a challenger attitude that has Arts & Letters poised for future growth. —Kyle O’Brien Fred & Farid L.A. With culture and DEI at its core, Fred & Farid doesn't rely on just making ads for brands; it uses creativity to find innovative business solutions for its partners, which include HP, Louis VIII and Longchamp. The agency has offices in Paris, Shanghai, New York and Los Angeles, but its the West Coast office that has really caught our eye in recent months, producing an impressive volume of high-quality work in 2021. For instance, this 60-second spot for Ladder Life Insurance is comically dark and comes with the best legal disclosure in advertising history. —J.F. Gut Anselmo Ramos and Gaston Bigio’s agency is poised for growth, as it racks up wins all over North and South America, especially in the burgeoning Hispanic and Latinx market. The agency has been ramping up hiring a highly diverse crew to address growth from Canada to Mexico and beyond for clients ranging from Tim Hortons in the north to Mercado Libre in the south and big players like Bud Light, KitKat, Under Armour and WhatsApp in between. As the agency continues to expand in just its fourth year, the Miami-based creative company is one to be watched. —K.O.B. Le Pub The idea of an agency dedicated to one client is still hotly debated in ad circles, but one bespoke shop worth watching is definitely Publicis' Le Pub. Based in Amsterdam and focused exclusively on high-profile client Heineken, the office builds on the success of Publicis Italy (Adweek's 2021 International Agency of the Year and Le Pub's creative architects) while folding in the resources of sibling services like Epsilon and Publicis Sapient. —David Griner Majority Atlanta-based agency Majority has been in business for less than a year and has already managed to create some of the most culturally resonant work for OshKosh, NBA’s G League, dating app BLK and more. With a mission to help shape a more inclusive ad industry, the burgeoning shop founded by Omid Farhang, Asmirh Davis and Jorge Hernandez has rendered work that authentically and intelligently taps into culture. Majority offers a fresh perspective that is backed by the legitimate successes of BLK’s “Vax That Thang Up” and OshKosh’s “Today Is Someday,” uniquely positioning the shop to be a serious creative contender in 2022. —Shannon Miller Media.Monks Media.Monks is undoubtedly an outlier here, as Media.Monks is a digital-first agency with content production at the center of its offerings. Using data and analytics to power its offerings, Media.Monks has quickly emerged as a leader in the digital marketing space. Martin Sorrell aggressively courted new agencies in 2021, acquiring performance marketing powerhouse Decoded, Canadian experiential agency Jam3 and performance marketing shop Metric Theory. This next year could be a huge year for the agency as it continues to grow and add clients. —J.F. Mortierbrigade Unless you're an international creativity junkie—or Belgian—you probably haven't heard of independent agency Mortierbrigade. But the Brussels-based shop has been carving out a reputation for norm-shattering creativity since 2004 and has grown its profile at a strong clip in recent years. This year, the agency tackled the gender imbalance of domestic roles in the Zoom era and won Film gold at Cannes Lions for its jaw-dropping, deeply uncomfortable ad about women's career obstacles, titled "Eternal Pregnancy." —D.G. Movers + Shakers Movers + Shakers mastered TikTok marketing before it was cool, and after leading Adweek’s Fastest Growing Agencies List with 2,227% growth, the shop is on track for another impressive year. Instead of tying brands to tired jingles, the agency specializes in producing original songs for brands like e.l.f., Amazon Fashion and DSW. The agency, which has offices in New York and Santa Monica, Calif., is a master at combating Gen Z ad blindness. Instead of launching invasive marketing campaigns, Movers + Shakers knows how to use platforms like TikTok to create culturally-relevant moments that bring brands to the center of pop culture conversations. Its campaigns for clients have amassed more than 150 billion views on the platform. —Emmy Liederman MSCHF Few agencies have made headlines in such a shocking way as MSCHF has this year. Although, let's backup first—MSCHF is technically an art collective that happens to do a lot of work with brands. MSCHF was behind the Lil Nas X-Nike Satan Shoes that resulted in a court battle. (MSCHF's decision to recall the shoes only drove the price of them up.) It was also behind Mythical Kitchen's Illegal Chips, which come in flavors inspired by illegal foods in the U.S, like horse meat, Fugu poison blowfish and maggot cheese. And it's behind Mr. Beast's $35 Lamborghini giveaway. As Adweek's international editor David Griner describes their work: "It's bananas." —J.F. Ogilvy Ogilvy has tripled-down on creative leadership over the past year, adding Devika Bulchandani as North America CEO, Liz Taylor as global chief creative and Chris Beresford-Hill as the president of advertising for North America. Ogilvy is emphasizing that creativity will be at the heart of everything it does in 2022. With Ogilvy expected to be at the center of OpenX, WPP's bespoke agency for Coca-Cola, it's a big opportunity for Ogilvy's North America offices to make some noise after a few quiet years. —J.F. Palette Group Brooklyn-based Palette Group, founded by life partners Nate Nichols and Stefanie Behringer, is the business side of a partnership that also gave birth to the DEI-focused Allyship and Action event series. As their profile has grown, so has their client roster, which included the Gates Foundation and Foot Locker, along with subsidiary Footaction, in 2021. The agency's recent "Welcome to Newark" tourism video for the historic New Jersey city showed how Palette Group blends artistry with soul in unexpected ways. —D.G. Uncommon Creative Studio More than four years after former Grey London executives Nils Leonard, Lucy Jameson and Natalie Graeme split from the WPP agency to start their own venture, Uncommon Creative Studio has not only become one of the hottest shops in the U.K. but is also garnering international attention. A turning point came in 2021, when the agency beat a WPP team to win the contested British Airways account. It showed that Uncommon is finally coming into its own. In the past couple of years it has created some of the most buzzworthy work in the U.K. ad scene, including lauded campaigns for Google, H&M, ITV, The Guardian and B&Q. After shaking up its home market, it could now be time for the agency to take its creative sauce abroad. —Brittaney Kiefer VaynerMedia One of the hottest topics of 2021 will only grow in importance in 2022: NFTs. Gary Vaynerchuk has heavily invested in the emerging tool, allowing his agency to create VaynerNFT and sign AB InBev as its first client. The agency projected its growth for 2021 at more than 30%, and is far ahead of the advertising industry at creating a diverse workforce. More than 40% of its workforce and its executive leadership identify as BIPOC or multiracial, and 56% of its workforce are women. VaynerMedia has also been ahead of the curve, combining creative and media under one roof, a growing trend the industry saw as clients are increasingly remarrying the two. —J.F. We Are Rosie We Are Rosie is a talent marketplace made for the current age. Stephanie Nadi Olson founded the fully remote agency in 2018 as a community of on-demand independent marketing experts who are ready to augment and complement in-house teams and capabilities. It has flourished and now boasts 9,000-and-growing diverse and skilled marketers available to an impressive list of clients, including Microsoft, Meta, Diageo and IBM. It is home to those who opt out of the traditional work environment, many from marginalized, underrepresented or underserved groups. The agency also finished near the top of Adweek’s latest Fastest Growing Agencies list, with more than 500% growth over the last several years, and it just completed a new round of funding that values the agency at $100 million. —K.O.B.