Uncommon Creative Studio is off to a flying start in the U.S.

It was a seemingly routine brief: create a brand identity and promotional materials for Reframe, a new conference about video innovation being hosted by Vimeo. But the design solution that Uncommon Creative Studio came back with was anything but ordinary. See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here In one of the more fun visual ideas of 2024, Uncommon’s New York office created an identity for Reframe that had resolution at the core. Outdoor ads around New York got progressively higher res the closer they got to the event venue. Far from the location, the ads were blurry and pixelated; closer to it, they were sharper and more defined. For Vimeo, this embodied the platform’s proud history as the first high-res video site on the internet. For Uncommon, it was an example of how it approaches many assignments: using highly creative, often design-driven work to earn outsized buzz for brands in culture. “What I love most [about Uncommon] is not being precious about looking for an opportunity everywhere,” said Sam Shepherd, the agency’s chief creative officer in New York. “There’s a sense of urgency not just to answer the brief but to find a way to shake things up.” Uncommon did just that across its three offices in 2024—the founding operation in London, along with newer outposts in New York and Stockholm. With revenue growth of 40% across the network in 2024, and a slew of client wins, new hires and buzzy work—particularly in New York—Uncommon is No. 5 on this year’s Ad Age Agency A-List. The British are coming Gaining a foothold in the U.S. is notoriously tough for U.K. agencies. Yet in its first full year stateside—it announced the New York office in October 2023 and opened on Wooster Street in SoHo in January 2024—Uncommon has made it look easy. Its U.S. account and project wins so far have included Guinness, Instagram (global), Lyft, SiriusXM, the National Association of Realtors, AG1, NBCUniversal’s Peacock, Diageo’s Lagavulin and Oban, Britbox, Harry’s, Vimeo and Vimergy. The agency said it won 80% of the accounts it pitched in 2024. It also bolstered the leadership team in New York with the addition of Droga5’s Lindsay Cole as president last summer, joining 2023 hires Shepherd and Steve Zaroff, chief strategy officer. Nils Leonard, one of Uncommon’s three founders—with Natalie Graeme and Lucy Jameson—has relocated to New York as well, further boosting the team there. The New York studio has also gained momentum by delivering top-notch creative in all shapes and sizes. Its work has included everything from a soup-to-nuts rebrand of SiriusXM—with extensions including a heavy metal Christmas sweater, an artful Kim Gehrig-directed spot on the Oscars (below) and a sponsorship of Howard University’s new hip-hop studies minor—to its own bizarre New York Fashion Week stunt, “Ratboot,” featuring knee-high leather boots with real taxidermied rats in them. Other campaigns have included quirky comic spots for Harry’s; a photo series for Quaker with portraits of people aged 1 to 100; stark, copy-driven global ads for The Ordinary focused on skin care science rather than celebrity; and a U.S. version of Uncommon London’s acclaimed “A British Original” effort for British Airways. The goal in New York is not to replicate the mothership but to forge a uniquely American version of it: an instigator that pushes clients to find a place in culture through attention-grabbing work. “We always wanted the foundational principles of Uncommon to travel—how we see the world, how we show up in pitches, the kind of ambitious clients we go after,” said Graeme. “But we want to put a real stamp on that in an American way. It feels distinctly American when you walk into the New York studio.” Finding like-minded clients Uncommon attracts clients who want what the agency is selling: bold ideas with an element of chaos, tempered by craft. This approach has long attracted blue-chip brands—British Airways, Beats by Dre, EA Sports, Nike’s Jordan Brand—but the agency has also vibed with more unexpected partners, such as the National Association of Realtors. Its first work for the NAR is expected soon. See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here “Our ability to go into their headquarters in Washington and pitch our way, forget any preconceived notion of what the brand might be, and just go with our gut—it’s what Uncommon does,” said Shepherd. “Every conversation starts with the clients—ensuring they are on the same page in terms of their ambition and what’s driving them,” said Cole. “It works internally in the way we hire people and externally in terms of the clients we want to bring in the door.” Clients seeking real change are often energized. “I have never been bored in a meeting with Uncommon. Excited—scared, maybe—but never bored. The pace of work and the volume of ideas is exhilarating,” said Suzi Watford, former chief growth officer at SiriusXM, now chief strategy officer at The Washington Post. “Uncommon push you to get the very best work for the biggest impact to your business, and they make you feel brave enough to actually do it … supporting you and helping to win over stakeholders, while also provoking you to think more about customer and culture more than the internal nonsense. Brilliant agencies make you want to do better work together, and working with Uncommon made me do that.” “I know the agency feels the same jeopardy we do, which creates good tension and a contract, to the extent we want to see their ideas brought to life as much as they do, and they want to see how far the work can be pushed while hitting the KPI,” said David Jackson, VP of ventures at EA Sports. (Uncommon led the global rebrand of EA Sports FC, among other projects.) “This inception switch of each party owning the other’s responsibility is a magic trick, as there’s no fucking around, no wasted time—just a restless desire to incite greatness in a world of progressive mediocrity.” “Uncommon lives up to their name,” said Dan Brooks, VP of creative and brand at Vimeo. “They pushed us beyond the familiar, insisting on work that truly matters.” The studio model The so-called studio model—prioritizing varied skill sets to enable making at speed—allows Uncommon to efficiently offer a wide range of solutions to clients, from traditional advertising to products, games, experiences and more. It also allows the agency to experiment with its own content, sending promising ideas quickly into production—such as Ratboot, which went viral moments after a model took a test walk in them up a SoHo street. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Janette Ok (@ms.janetteok) “I think Natalie and Lucy and Nils all thought I was crazy,” Shepherd said of Ratboot, which was not done for a client. “I’m happy it got a little traction.” “The power of the studio model is exactly that—we don’t have to depend on other people to give us briefs,” said Graeme. “It’s about recognizing the talent you have and not being dependent on others to hand you the brief exactly the way you want it fed to you.” Clients, too, benefit from this ability to experiment creatively. The agency has been working on assignments beyond advertising lately, including redesigning British Airways’ Executive Club experience and working with The Ordinary on its retail experience. “What is the role of a storefront? What happens for the 12 hours a day when the store’s not open? How could a store make you feel better after you’ve been in there?” said Leonard. “These bigger conversations are usually buried, but they’re the sort of stuff the studio lives for.” “We’ve always had that philosophy of, how do we make this more famous?” Graeme said. “How do we use the skill sets we have to take this further, to get more bang for the buck from the money our client is investing?” Growth in New York The New York studio has expanded to more than 40 people. Other key additions in the past year have included senior creatives Kelley Barrett and Katie DiNardo, hired in January 2024; Beth Johnson, who joined as design director in September; and Nedal Ahmed, named executive creative director—Shepherd’s No. 2—in January 2025. Barrett and DiNardo worked with Shepherd at Leo Burnett on projects including “The Lost Class” for Change the Ref, in which a former president of the NRA was fooled into giving a graduation speech to thousands of empty seats—representing high schoolers killed by guns who would never get to graduate. “My only stipulation in coming to Uncommon was I’d get to hire this young team [Barrett and DiNardo],” Shepherd said. “They have unbelievably intelligent, soulful work, and they can also write the best comedy scripts ever. Plugging Katie and Kelley in on anything and everything has been great. As I look to year two, I do think it’s the range that no one can do like we can.” Ahmed, meanwhile, was the copywriter on Procter & Gamble’s Emmy-winning spot “The Talk” in 2017 and also worked on “Mama Said Knock You Out” featuring Serena Williams for Chase Bank, among other campaigns. See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here With Shepherd leading the charge, Uncommon New York feels ready for any creative challenge presented to them. “He looks nice, doesn’t he? But he’s a fucker,” Leonard said of Shepherd. “He has unrivaled levels of ambition, energy and resilience—and honestly, articulation and charm, which you need if you’re making challenging and progressive work.” Opening in New York was made possible in the first place by the investment from Havas, which bought a 51% stake in Uncommon in 2023—and has largely left the agency alone to evolve in its own way, the principals said. “Honestly, they’ve been fantastic,” said Jameson. “They recognize that the [Uncommon] brand has to be built and cooked differently than a holding company brand, so they’ve let us get on with it.” “The narrative of our industry is that great companies find a vision, grow it, then get snapped up to go and fix something that’s irrelevant to their original vision,” said Leonard. “In this case, the conversation was incredibly candid. ‘How far do you think you guys can go?’ And that’s what they’ve backed. I’d like to believe it’s a reference point for how an investment should take place.” What’s next for the studio 2025 should be a watershed year for Uncommon. Its first campaigns for Guinness, Instagram, Lyft and NAR are coming soon. It’s working on bringing Unrest, its accelerator for impact-driven startups, stateside. It’s continuing to build its design and entertainment practices, as well. And it’s exploring architecture, with plans for a U.S. version of London’s dystopian “UnLandmarks” project, created for English designer Thomas Heatherwick’s “Humanise” movement—which used AI to create “boring” modernist versions of landmarks such as Buckingham Palace and Edinburgh Castle as a way of advocating for more traditionally soulful architecture. But while Uncommon New York is clearly inspired by London—the two offices, along with Stockholm, operate as a “hive mind,” the principals said—New York is also unfettered by that tradition as it looks to make its mark. “I get staggered by the scale of the opportunity here,” Leonard said of the U.S. “And we’re not replicating London. It’s about, how do we build a retinue of incredible people, all of whom are different, and then rely on the whole. It’s nimble enough, and the vision is clear enough, that it’s worked. It feels like a crew of people trying to win. And everything else can fuck off.” See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here

Uncommon Creative Studio is off to a flying start in the U.S.

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