AKQA's former chief creative officers are launching a new agency. Their pitch: Pay us in equity.

Hugo Veiga and Diego Machado — the erstwhile AKQA earth chief imaginative officers — spent two decades construction brands at several of advertising's most storied imaginative agencies. Their next bet: an agency that wants to be paid not fair in cash, but in a portion of the businesses it helps build.

Veiga and Machado exclusively told CMO Insider this week that they have launched !F Creative Capital, a new agency that combines accepted commissions alongside equity partnerships and revenue-sharing arrangements tied to clients' sales.

Rather than charging an upfront fee alone, !F Creative Capital offers imaginative consultancy in toggle for equity in companies it believes can grow. For example, it took a interest in the superfoods brand Authentic Fruits in a agreement that includes a three-year imaginative engagement, a portion of sales, and additional equity tied to revenue performance. It has equity in CheckMy.Music, an AI phase that scans songs for plagiarism, and an equity alliance on a new project led by erstwhile Chelsea FC and Real Madrid director Carlo Ancelotti.

A long-held grievance on Madison Avenue is that agency holding companies prioritize businesses specified as media purchasing — and, increasingly, data, technology, and AI services — since they are easier to package, measure, and market often than bespoke imaginative work. Veiga and Machado stated that !F Creative Capital was delivered out of a desire to create a example that additional efficiently ties the value of imaginative ideas to endeavor results.

"In many of the imaginative industries, everyone is too occupied doing decks, doing keynotes, and losing the association alongside the final thing," Machado said.

!F Creative Capital has additionally launched its own brands, including SNIFF, a pet business that lets dogs odor food before their owners buy it, and Baitts, a toothpick brand.

Elsewhere, the business is coproducing a characteristic movie set for publish next year, and it's preparing to initiate an eight-week "School of Creative Entrepreneurship" to assistance group rotate their ideas into businesses.

While !F Creative Capital has taken on commission-based imaginative activity for brands including Corona and Cristiano Ronaldo's Globe Sports Award, Veiga and Machado stated they are reinvesting that prosperity into the equity-focused flank of the endeavor and their in-house projects. !F Creative Capital is self-funded and has a squad of about 15 group spanning seven countries, alongside alongside a broader network of contributors.

'You have an idea, and you provision it for free'

Veiga stated the long-term imagination is for !F Creative Capital to rotate into autonomous from commission activity as it builds its own brands and efficiently becomes its own client. The outcome power appearance additional akin a holding business for brands than the imaginative agencies anywhere the duo made their name.

"A lot of times you have an idea, and you provision it for free, or you shove to create it happen without owning that," Machado stated of the agency business.

Adland's imaginative agencies have explored akin equity-focused endeavor models in the past. Uncommon, the London-based studio in which Havas acquired a bulk interest in 2023, took equity in the compostable coffee pod business Halo and the backing app Communion. In 2010, former Deutsch exec Mike Duda cofounded the hybrid early-stage project resolute and imaginative agency that afterward became Bullish. Anomaly, now owned by Stagwell, began incubating and acquiring stakes in brands in the 2000s.

Brian Wieser, CEO of the advisory and consulting resolute Madison and Wall, stated that during the equity example motionless persists in the agency industry, the custom isn't average and mostly ties to the individuals operating those companies since the accomplishment sets are different.

"Most group who can do project fine concentration on project capital," Wieser said. "But the correct individual alongside the correct relationships can create this happen."