Six years after they founded their agency Together, Rufus Chuter and Kris Hadley have expanded the leadership team. Their mission remains the same: to blend creativity, technology and marketing communications.
On day two of starting Together, Rufus Chuter and Kris Hadley found themselves sitting in a big empty office in the Auckland suburb of Ellerslie.
The two colleagues, friends and now Co-founders, took one look at each other and thought: “Well, crikey, we’re doing this thing.”
That “thing” was starting their own media agency.
Six years later, they’re now based in central Auckland. The office is a hive of activity, full of people, desks, computers and plants.
“It’s been a really steady but relatively fast growth trajectory from there. We’ve been very lucky that we’ve managed to build a pretty diverse client base relatively quickly,” says Chuter.
“That was particularly important because we hit Covid pretty quickly – within 18 months of launching the business. But we were fortunate we had diversified our client base enough and also that we managed to pick up projects through Covid by being more nimble.”
Together describes itself as part media agency and part technology and data consultancy. “Blending creativity, technology and marketing communications has really been what has driven our team and a lot of the culture of this business,” says Hadley.
In recognition of that growth, the agency announced a new team and leadership structure in July to better reflect its core services and capabilities across media, marketing, data and advanced technology like AI.
The leadership team now numbers five: co-founders and managing partners Chuter and Hadley are joined by Penelope Brown, who was welcomed to Together in April and manages the media agency day-to-day as Managing Director of Media, Andy Bell as the Managing Director of CXM, Cloud and Data & Analytics and Suraj Barnawal, former Head of Programmable Media, now the Chief Technology and Innovation Officer.
Remaining relevant
Creating these new roles felt like a natural evolution to Chuter and Hadley, who have long had a vision for where the agency needs to be to remain relevant.
They knew two things about the future: firstly that it will be more first-party data driven. Secondly, it’ll resemble direct marketing more, making those skillsets more important, says Chuter.
Navigating the changing technology and data landscape is a critical and core component of media and planning, as is the need for strategic talent.
The restructure reflects this, they say, equipping Together to help marketers drive growth, transform their capabilities – both in marketing and data infrastructure – and use technology to stay fit.
“We believe that increasingly competitive advantages lie in the ability of agencies or partners to create bespoke data technology, or AI solutions to plug into clients’ infrastucture,” says Chuter.
A recent example is Roof ID, work with Colorsteel that won gold at this year’s Beacon Awards and Excellence Data Insights Strategy at the YouTube NZ Marketing awards 2024.
The agency created a custom machine learning model that allowed Colorsteel to identify roofs in Auckland in need of replacing at scale.
Normally, people don’t often know they need a new roof until it starts leaking, and the previous process of identifying a degraded roof was labour intesive, involving people walking the streets and looking at the houses.
This work shows Together’s point of difference, says Barnawal.
“Swiftly bringing ideas to life, ensuring high-quality execution and adapting to new consumer behaviours and technology fast.”
When it comes to AI, Brown believes the technology adds more opportunities than challenges – especially in the fragmented media landscape that requires more admin than ever before.
“So you start to get away from being able to do wonderfully creative, insightful work and you’re doing a lot of administrative tasks, with so many more channels and different ways we need to approach buying media.”
AI transformation
Using AI in the office for scheduling and planning capabilities, as well as other tasks, has allowed Together to cut back on the mundane.
“Here’s a simple example of the impact that can have. We run a lot of location-based campaigns. Historically they have been really time consuming to set up. One of our machine learning engineers proactively created an AI-based tool and interface that transforms that job from one that takes hours, to one that can be completed in a matter of minutes,” says Bell.
It comes back to Together’s goal to be creative problem solvers – freeing up its teams to have more space for creativity is always going to be a win-win.
“We’re not a creativity agency and we’re not making ads, but there’s a tonne of creativity that can be applied to the challenges we’re helping clients navigate,” says Chuter.
Together spawned from a two decade-long relationship – Chuter and Hadley have known each other since the early 2000s, when they started their careers in media at a similar time.
In fact, Chuter was one of Hadley’s first clients way back when.
“He’s still talking to me 20 years later, so I must be doing something good,” Hadley laughs.
By 2018, they were both in senior roles within the industry, with Chuter heading up media at FCB Aotearoa and Hadley the head of digital marketing technology at OMD.
Looking to stretch
Feeling like he’d reached a plateau in his personal career journey, Chuter says he’d stopped learning and growing.
“I wanted to stretch myself but I could also see that the industry and the way marketing was changing suggested a slightly different approach was necessary.”
One day, the two caught up for coffee and realised they shared these sentiments.
With Chuter’s background as a strategist and Hadley a digital practitioner, their skillsets were complementary. “That combination of really great thinking and deep technological understanding was going to be a strong foundation,” says Chuter.
“Within a heartbeat of each other we’d said, ‘Shall we give this a go?’ And handed in our notice.”
They are grateful for the incredible backing they’ve had from across the industry – from both clients and other agencies – with people getting in touch to say, “We love what you’re doing, we’re here for you. How can we help support you?”
Brown recalls the moment Chuter and Hadley announced they were starting their own agency. A collective ‘oh no’ rolled through the industry, she laughs.
“Because they are a really good couple. We wanted to see you guys succeed, but we knew how brilliant they were. They could be a really strong competitor,” says Brown.
From there, Together kept growing – not for the sake of it, but because they enjoyed solving problems and working with different clients, says Chuter.
What really brought home the fact that he and Hadley had started a successful business was when they won Best in Show and Media Agency of the Year at both the Beacon Awards and the IAB Awards in 2022, a rare double -double.
“That was little old us on the stage with the spotlight on us – I think that was a real moment for us going, ‘This thing is real,’” says Chuter.
Winning Digital Agency and Media Agency of the year, which they received back to back in 2023 and this year, made Together the most awarded agency at the Beacon Awards, taking out two golds and 10 silvers.
Awards are good, but Chuter is proudest of the people Together works with and the great talent who work at the business.
A day at Together is never dull – lots of client meetings, problem solving and walking, says Managing Director – Media, Penelope Brown.
“We do a lot of walking meetings, I don’t know how many cumulative laps of City Works Depot we’ve done.”
It might sound cheesy, but most days see the team coming together to take a break, a breath and celebrate the wins, says Brown.
More collaboration
Back in 2018, the agency name came from Hadley and Chuter’s shared feeling that the world of marketing had been pulled apart.
“There was an era where we’d siloed away media, data, customer marketing – and some clients felt there was also less collaboration and many media partners were feeling the same way,” says Chuter.
“Technology and data was pulling everything back together, reducing the benefits of media buying scale and prioritising quality thinking and collaboration. Marketers and publishers also wanted everyone back around the table again with no agendas and full transparency, so we felt there was an opportunity to put marketing back together again around more strategic and indepedent media, technology and data partnership.
“The name Together was also about a promise of a working style and a relationship that was more collaborative and partnership based.”
This was first published in the 2024 September-October NZ Marketing Magazine issue. Subscribe here.
