Victoria Scally launched her agency in December 2019, just before the pandemic hit, to fill a market gap she'd identified while freelancing. What began as a solution to her own marketing challenges has evolved into a distinctive model that's proving resilient in today's challenging agency landscape.
"I was getting asked for more and more strategy work, and then there was the 'what next' when it came to execution," Scally explains. "By virtue of working for myself, I'd built up a great network of really senior but brilliant execution talent - people who are still working with us today."
The decision to create an agency brand served dual purposes: it made marketing easier ("it was much easier to talk about 'we' and the collective versus me by myself") and allowed her to bring in specialists as digital platforms grew increasingly complex. "This is beyond what I can keep up with," she recalls thinking, recognising the need for subject matter experts.
The Avengers approach to agency work
What distinguishes WAAM from traditional agencies is their deliberate rejection of the retainer model. Instead, they assemble bespoke teams for each client challenge, what Scally colourfully describes as an "Avengers style" approach.
"We don't operate in the classic rounds of amends kind of way," she explains. "We work very much alongside you. It's very transparent, have a look under the hood, see everything that's going on."
This transparency extends to their financial model. "We're transparent with our freelancers about what they should be charging rate-wise. If they come to us and they're under charging, we will bump them up. We're transparent about what our markup is and we're also transparent with clients about how that works."
The approach creates a fundamentally different client relationship. Rather than keeping talent hidden behind a client services layer, WAAM invites direct communication. "Come and talk directly with the team," says Scally. "We invite clients into our Slack so people can talk live all the time."
Solving complex brand challenges
This collaborative model proved particularly effective for The Coconut Collab, where WAAM embedded a fractional team member while also delivering a comprehensive brand repositioning and strategic pivot. The project encompassed everything from deep customer insights to commercial strategy and innovation recommendations, culminating in a new brand toolkit, photoshoot, digital strategy and website.
The project showcased WAAM's ability to bring together diverse expertise - "seven people all coming together to make this beautiful pivot from a brand under pressure from shifts in category and consumer behaviour to moving mainstream, at last count this work had delivered double-digit % YoY growth.”
"A lot of those projects are as much about creating the environment behaviour transformation than handing a client something brand new and expecting them to run with it,'" Scally notes.
Senior talent without the senior price tag
What might surprise potential clients about working with WAAM is "the level of seniority and experience that you can tap into," says Scally. The agency deliberately skews senior, working with experienced practitioners and fractional CMOs who bring deep domain expertise.
This challenges the traditional agency model where clients often worry about paying for senior strategists only to have work handed off to juniors. "The people doing the work are the experts," Scally emphasises. "You'll get someone who has been there, seen it, and done it, without any more incremental cost really, because you're paying mostly for that person. That person can also tell you how it really is."
The model also allows for what Scally calls "naive expertise", bringing in subject matter experts who might not have industry experience but can challenge received wisdom. "Having that kind of naive expertise to push and challenge and question that sort of received knowledge you get when you've worked in an industry for a long time is also a superpower."
The dream client: ambitious but flexible
When asked about her dream client, Scally doesn't hesitate: "A client who is ambitious and has a clear goal but hasn't got really fixed ideas about how to get there."
This openness allows WAAM to explore non-obvious solutions. A brief that starts with "our social isn't working for us" might evolve into discussions about content creation, events, or festivals - putting "the right things in the right order" rather than jumping to predetermined solutions.
The agency particularly values transparency from clients. "Show us everything. Don't be embarrassed if things aren't as structured as you'd like them to be," Scally advises. "Be really open and honest about where you are."
This approach has earned them loyal clients who appreciate the lack of agency politics. As Scally reports, one long standing client said "the best thing about it was the fact that it's collective of people who really want to create the best work for the brand."
Navigating the future: flexibility as a competitive advantage
Looking ahead, Scally sees WAAM's flexible model as particularly well-suited to challenging market conditions. "It's not an easy market at the moment for agencies, but we seem to be happily, slightly accidentally, in quite a strong position."
The agency is exploring partnerships with traditional agencies looking to build out their freelance capabilities. "We've kind of already cracked that," Scally notes. "Don't start from zero, just plug our team in."
For marketing directors and CMOs under pressure to do more with less, WAAM offers the ability to scale up and down as needed. "You're not suddenly on the hook for something that's quite expensive that you can't really justify the cost of, and crucially, haven't also yet built the operating model for yet." Scally explains.
As traditional agencies struggle with fixed costs and changing client demands, WAAM's transparent, flexible approach appears increasingly attractive. By curating expert teams tailored to specific challenges and maintaining complete transparency throughout the process, they've created a model that delivers expertise without the traditional agency overhead—proving that sometimes the most effective solutions come not from grand reveals, but from open and honest collaboration.
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