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Steering large organisations through the choppy waters of change is no mean feat. As creatures of habit, humans need a degree of stability to plan their professional and personal lives and to pull of big projects, but constantly evolving markets and tech landscapes means that businesses need to be flexible and able to move at speed to meet client needs and new opportunities. We want to speak to agency, production and post CEOs, MDs, founders and creative leaders to find out how they think about these seemingly competing challenges.

As a company going on 25 years, we’ve seen many tides change. We have weathered storms, invented and adapted, and have come to see change not as an adversary but an inherent part of every successful company’s story. To move forward and continue to grow as we do so, is crucial for us to honour the core values that have made us successful and that have been inherent to the brand since day one. This is especially true of a company that has a heritage like ours.

As Hornet expands and diversifies, we make sure that the methods and means of doing so are organic and reflective of our core values. All new verticals we have grown are complimentary to the offerings and ethos we have always prized ourselves on– being fundamentally built on wonderful storytelling, a strong personal point of view on design, and a human-centric culture of creativity. This human touch has always been woven into how we produce and the art we create.

Recently, we have moved a step further into mixed media live action by bringing in someone who not only comes from live action on the agency side, but who has a passion and point of view about how to build a live action/mixed media arm– Ben Sharpe. This vertical he is spearheading is inherently connected with every team in our studio as we can own more of our output for mixed media jobs. The cross-departmental collaborative nature of our studio creates a wealth of innovation and inspiration.

As a studio with a discerning eye for design, our motion capabilities have evolved and brought us to a place– under the discerning leadership of creative director Itay Tevel– where we are on the forefront of motion, recruit top designers, and share our insight on global stages like OFFF.

Our increasing ownership of projects has evolved into a more defined focus on brand activations, campaign development, and brand design. With a strategy-driven approach to storytelling, we create work that lives at the intersection of design, advertising, and experience—translating brand narratives into bold, culture-shaping creative. More to come.

Attitude about change as a studio:

Our culture of evolution and change can be felt throughout our studio. With our roster of talent as well as an internal team of nearly 100 full time employees, we are bringing in and bolstering a new generation of artists and directors who are using tools such as Blender and Unreal, and exploring creative ideas that challenge traditional concepts of storytelling. This new creative energy and source of inspiration is palpable throughout the studio on any given day. Being a team that embraces new horizons gives us a competitive edge in terms of being able to adapt to change.

New technology allows us to do what we do, and we are always exploring new tools to ultimately enhance our final creative output– whether that is leaning into the vast worldbuilding and character designing capabilities of game engines or using AI as an iterative tool for creative concepting and brainstorming.

We strive to be software agnostic and use the best tools available for any given project. Blender has been a natural integration to our pipeline and our director duo Laser Days relied on it to create the first animated film to be shown on the Empire State Building– a thrilling collaboration between WhatsApp and Mercedes F1. Our 24-minute CG film for Mac Miller’s posthumous album Balloonerism was a huge feat that required a custom Houdini pipeline with nearly two dozen software and plugins to pull off.

We couldn't touch on new technologies without noting that everyone in the industry has a take on the use of AI. We are staying up to date with unfolding conversations around the topic as well as getting in on the ground floor with new AI powered capabilities and tools. We created an AI advisory board within each department to test new software, and we share each team’s learnings within a larger monthly conversation that is available for the entire studio to participate in.

Our growth as a company has been a testament to the hard work of the teams and our new and continued relationships with our clients. In order to grow to the capacity of the work coming in, we are consistently upgrading our software and customising it for the needs of our studio. Our pipeline team recently implemented AWS as a flexible, secure, and robust cloud rendering, storage, and virtual desktop solution. We’ve also created a secure production network in line with industry-wide standards that can be customised to fit client needs.

Trends in client needs:

As the industry changes and new platforms gain momentum, deliverables have expanded into every corner of the digital realm. We’ve seen this reach beyond broadcast, web, and even social platforms like Instagram, with our latest campaign for Chipotle becoming the first restaurant advertisement on Roblox.

To navigate these new platforms, audiences, and deliverables, our clients want nimble, trusted partners who understand their brand and can be adaptable to future needs. We are very proud to be a trusted partner going on 15 years with Leo Burnett out of London for McDonald’s UK Happy Meals, 7 years collaborating with the in-house team at Spotify, 5 years leading the instantly-recognisable branded campaigns with Kroger, and blossoming relationships with newer partners such as Expedia group and Apple. We treasure our client relationships and treat every job as an opportunity to build something new together.

Post-Covid hybrid

Post-covid, we internalised that not everything has to be accomplished under our roof and we can tap into the best talent across the world by embracing remote work. And while we adapted to this new opportunity, we also appreciate the value of the community we have built in person that sets us apart as a truly people-first place to work. We believed in the power of community so much that we signed a 15k square ft lease in SoHo in the middle of COVID and modelled it exactly to our needs. Our new space was built to bolster our in-person culture with functional state of the art facilities as well as spaces to co-mingle, collaborate, celebrate, play Mario Kart, and get to know each other.

Choppy waters are not unique - it's almost a constant. We’ve been here before and anyone who hasn't experienced it will at some point. After 25 years we want to celebrate the good times and our successes while keeping our eyes on longevity and forward thinking.