‍The Or: Made to Order‍

Founded as part of the Mother Family, The Or has carved out a distinctive position in the creative landscape over the past five years. Led by Paulo Salomao, and co-founders Sarah Oberman, Metz ti Bryan, Charlene Chandrasekaran and Dan Morris, this ideas-first agency has rapidly built a reputation for bespoke client solutions and category-defying creativity that refuses to be boxed into a single style or approach.

The agency's philosophy centres on a refreshingly different perspective: while most creative shops obsess over the output, The Or places equal—if not greater—emphasis on the input. "What we do is obsess about how we're going to do it, the team we put on it, and how we blend the services of Mother to make a tailor-made offering for the brand or business problem we're trying to solve," explains Salomao.

Made to order creativity

The Or's founding client, Bloom and Wild, provided the testing ground for their approach. Now preparing their third major brand campaign together, the relationship exemplifies how The Or shapes itself differently for each client challenge. This adaptability has become their hallmark, with subsequent clients like Taco Bell, Harry’s & Tails.com experiencing entirely different team structures and working methods.

"It's bonkers to us that in-house studios or creative directors like to do it the same way each time," says Salomao. "What we love is that we're now plugged into this Mother family of amazing people, and we just know what to ask and how to get under the skin of the client."

This philosophy has attracted significant clients, including ASOS, where The Or has helped navigate the complex challenges facing the fashion e-commerce giant. Their success in winning this account against larger competitors came down to two factors: genuine human connection and relevant category experience.

"Fashion is so difficult as a sector—the shoots are complicated, and clothes are the idea so the normal ways of working need to take a backseat," Salomao notes. "We casted it right, with people who had worked at Zalando and M&S. We got fashion, and we presented ourselves in a way they seemed to really trust and vibe with."

Relationships over transactions

For The Or, the ideal client relationship transcends the transactional. "We want clients that respect the fact that investing in a relationship between client and agency creates the value a brand wants out in a marketplace," says Salomao. "Strong, brave brands are born from relationships where clients like to be challenged, and agencies like to be challenged too"

This collaborative approach includes regular one-on-ones, ambition sessions, and quarterly evaluations to maintain open dialogue. The agency has even walked away from potential clients when it became clear the relationship wouldn't support their working style.

"It's not about being friends," Salomao clarifies. "It's about having a back-and-forth that can level up the work. I've never made a piece of work that's unbelievably good with a relationship that's super cold."

This commitment to relationship-building has paid dividends, with The Or now receiving significant referrals from satisfied clients—particularly in the scale-up sector, where founders and CMOs frequently recommend them to peers.

Values-driven talent

The agency's success hinges on recruiting individuals who embody three core values. First is creative curiosity—people who are "hungry to learn, hungry to be around creative people, read creative things," making them valuable partners for client businesses.

Second is teamwork—individuals without egos who thrive on collaboration and troubleshooting without finger-pointing. "We've got to have people that like getting around the table, like the conversation," says Salomao.

The third value might seem counterintuitive: frustration. "We want people that are not happy with how advertising is, who want to better it in some capacity," Salomao explains. This constructive dissatisfaction drives innovation and improvement, with The Or providing a platform for these voices to be heard and acted upon.

This values-driven approach extends beyond client work to proactive creative projects that allow team members to pursue passion projects and experimental ideas. Rather than viewing these as distractions, The Or sees them as investments in creativity and team development.

"If the unit of value that you offer to clients is creativity, you've got to allow the people responsible for delivering it to exercise creativity in all different ways, not just on client briefs," Salomao argues.

Future ambitions

Looking ahead, Salomao's vision for The Or is clear: to be an agency without a signature style, where each solution is uniquely crafted for the specific challenge at hand.

"I want us to be an agency where you look at each case study and think, 'They answered that in that way? Genius. Oh my god, now they've answered it that way,'" he says. "For ideas to be solved in a way that is so agnostic of channel that it can literally pop off anywhere—just where is the idea is most effective and most creative."

This channel-agnostic, ideas-first approach positions The Or as neither a traditional advertising agency nor a pure creative shop, but something more fluid and responsive. "I think we're just an ideas agency," Salomao reflects. "Most of the time there's a very complex problem that needs quite an intricate idea or set of ideas to solve."

By starting each client engagement differently—with bespoke teams and approaches—The Or ensures they never fall into the trap of offering uniform solutions. It's a philosophy that has already attracted an impressive roster of clients and positioned this young agency as one of the most interesting propositions in the independent creative landscape.

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