In 2011, Dan, Ben, Stu & Ed launched Creature with one aim: to make work that real people can’t help but care about. Over the past eleven years, that has never faltered, but it has become bigger than we ever expected it could be. It has been the driving force behind our mission to always create work that delivers results for our clients, not awards for ourselves and, possibly most importantly, it was the spark that grew into our mission to leave the industry better than we found it.

And we’ve done just that. We are one of the most strategically awarded independent agencies. We have been named one of the best places to work by Campaign for three years running and have been included on the IPA iList for the past two years. We’ve spearheaded industry initiatives that have genuinely made a difference, like the Living Wage Pledge and creation of the industry’s first creative apprenticeship standard (with our good friends at the IPA), we’ve launched In The Wild, to change the way people get into the industry, and were even shortlisted as Independent Agency of the Year in 2021.

To do all that, we couldn’t always play by the rules, and our independence meant we didn’t have to, so it would take a very special company to come along for us to consider joining a group. Candid are just that company.

Candid is designed to offer a platform for independent agencies to grow. Which, excitingly in real terms, translates to us continuing to work and behave exactly as we always have done. We are now part of a group, which means we have access to data and services that we wouldn’t have had access to previously, but most importantly, Candid will enable us to scale Intelligent Misbehaviour like never before. And that starts immediately. Candid already own a brilliant agency in Amsterdam, XXS. They will become Creature Amsterdam, our first international office, bringing 25 years of experience in an incredibly exciting, and let’s face it, very cool market. Their arrival takes Creature abroad, and makes us proudly European - for now. Because the plan is to expand further, into more locations, each native to their market, but all living the Creature values and all fuelled by intelligent misbehaviour – the intelligence, as ever, provided by our smart and proprietary tools and processes at White Crow.

We’ve found a partner that gives us reach we haven’t had before, but who, fundamentally, values our culture and approach as much as we do: the ownership structure may have changed, but the desire to misbehave intelligently hasn’t; the desire to make work that real people can’t help but care about hasn’t; and the drive to leave the industry better than we found it hasn’t.

The Creature you know and love has a new home and is evolving into other countries, and it’s going to be sodding brilliant. Let’s misbehave, shall we?