Jade Manning and Vincent Osmond have built their careers around bold, transformative creativity. From their early days when the bromance ignited at DDB Johannesburg and on to TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris to leading campaigns at DDB Sydney for brands like Volkswagen and McDonald’s, the pair have consistently embraced creative risks.
Their momentum continued at Special Group Sydney, where they headed up the Carlton Dry, Disney, Kayo, and Virgin Australia accounts, crafting campaigns for Uber Eats, as well as major rebrands for Kathmandu and Virgin Australia.
Now, as founding Creative Partners at indie agency Today the Brave, alongside Jaimes Leggett, Vince and Jade aim to nurture a culture where boundary-pushing creativity thrives.
We had the chance to sit down with the creative leaders behind the agency to discuss their journey, their vision for the future, and what it truly means to be brave in advertising. After all, today is a good day to be brave.
From DDB Sydney to Special Group, and now Today the Brave—how have these experiences shaped your creative approach, and what makes Today the Brave stand out?
Not to overinflate advertising’s place in the world, but creative teams are a bit like bands—each with their own sound, shaped from album to album by their environment, influences and the producers who push them to be better.
We’ve been fortunate enough to work under a few ‘Rick Rubins’ along the way. Bigger agencies taught us how to navigate the machinery of big global brands without losing our voice. Indies showed us how to break the rules with intent and brilliant strategy.
Today the Brave is where we get to apply all those years of experience – the good, the bad, and everything in between, to create a truly unique space where people can make work that transforms brands.
“Bigger agencies taught us how to navigate the machinery of big global brands without losing our voice. Indies showed us how to break the rules with intent and brilliant strategy.”
It’s our very own concept album, really, but that’s where the analogy ends because neither of us can actually play an instrument.
Your agency name itself signals a commitment to boldness. How do you turn that ethos into tangible results, especially when working with clients who are open to risk-taking?
We have a saying in the agency: ‘Bravery isn’t bravado. Bravado is fucking stupid.’ Bravery isn’t about being the loudest or most controversial, it’s about believing that creativity can genuinely transform your business.
When you’re aligned in both ambition and strategy, taking that creative leap doesn’t feel risky at all. It feels pretty obvious.
“We have a saying in the agency: ‘Bravery isn’t bravado. Bravado is fucking stupid.'”
What’s the boldest creative risk you’ve taken on a campaign? How did you get the client on board, and what did you learn from the experience?
A bold creative risk sounds like a last-minute ta-da or a rabbit pulled out of a hat—which rarely goes down well with clients. For us, the path to bold creativity begins by establishing ambition up front.
Take our StrangeLove work, for instance. Having a disgruntled mum calling her children a bunch of arseholes isn’t something many brands would embrace, but for StrangeLove, it was actually quite an obvious choice.
Why? Because we’d already established the ambition to create a brutally honest tone of voice, backed by a beautifully simple product truth. When you lay that groundwork early, the ‘risky’ creative practically sells itself.
Can you share a campaign that best represents your ‘brave’ philosophy? What were the biggest challenges, and how did they shape your creative process moving forward?
HOYTS Cinema-sized Advertising comes to mind: an example of how a challenge with clear parameters can lead to more interesting work. Essentially, we needed to communicate the impact of the big cinema screen, with an existing media buy that was predominantly social… small screens.
We loved the inherent tension that existed there. So we challenged ourselves to play within these parameters which ultimately led to a campaign that ran small sections of full-scale, cinema-sized films on a mobile device.
How do you cultivate a culture of boundary-pushing creativity while staying true to Today the Brave’s core vision? Any leadership practices or rituals that play a key role?
We hire people who challenge us. As a creative leader, if you walk into a room believing no idea will ever surpass your own, you’ve already shut the door on any potential magic and completely negated the need for great talent around you.
“As a creative leader, if you walk into a room believing no idea will ever surpass your own, you’ve already shut the door on any potential magic.”
Creativity thrives on ownership of an idea and the responsibility of making it as good as it can be. Vince has a great fishing analogy for this: there’s no joy in being handed a rod with a fish already on the line. You want to bait the hook, cast the line, and ultimately land the fish on your own. Slyly handing over your own ideas in the guise of feedback means you’re only ever going to catch the same type of fish.
Which industries or creative challenges excite you most right now? Where do you see the biggest opportunities for pushing the boundaries in advertising?
We often get asked what a ‘dream client’ would be, and to be honest, while the notion of working on a ‘sexy’ brand like beers or cars is great, we’re pretty promiscuous when it comes to the type of industry we like.
“A client with a gnarly problem can really be quite intoxicating because more often than not it requires a creative idea equal in impact to counter it.”
What we really get excited about is clients or brands with clear problems. Like the old adage says, ‘The first step is actually admitting you have a problem.’ It never fails to surprise us how many brands never acknowledge this obvious first hurdle. You wouldn’t be talking to us if you didn’t have a problem that needed solving. A client with a gnarly problem can really be quite intoxicating because more often than not it requires a creative idea equal in impact to counter it.
Where do you see Today the Brave in five years, and how do you plan to shape the industry conversation along the way?
The best way to describe our vision is to say that we want to be Australia’s most magnetic creative agency – not just producing world-class talent, but attracting it too. Instead of a house style, we want to foster a house standard: consistently brave ideas that transform brands in unexpected ways.
Quick Hits
Most useful app or tool you’ve started using recently:
Sora. It will come as no surprise that the answer to this question is some type of AI, but text-to-video is still blowing our minds on a daily basis.
A piece of advice you give your team most often:
“Just have fun with it”. It’s mostly said in jest, but deep down we really mean it.
Something you want to learn or wish you were better at:
Jade: Learning to say no. It’s tempting to pursue every interesting opportunity, but sometimes focus requires turning down good ideas to make room for great ones.
Vince: Patience with the journey. We’ve grown from 5 to 20 people in a little over two years, but I still catch myself wanting everything faster – bigger wins, quicker growth. I need to constantly remind myself that good things take time.
You can see more at www.jadeandvince.com
