If you’ve ever basked in the glow of a campfire, sharing stories under the stars, the name Magic Camp likely evokes a sense of nostalgia. It might remind you of the cherished memories and camaraderie found at summer camp. That’s precisely the inspiration behind Magic Camp, a full-service agency founded by industry veterans Holly Willis and Mandi Bright. They are on a mission to revolutionize how advertising agencies operate.
Holly Willis is at the helm, bringing her extensive experience that includes pivotal roles at The Escape Pod, FCB, 360i (now Dentsu Creative), and 21st Century Fox. With her deep understanding of the industry’s dynamics and challenges, Willis wants to empower marketers and organizations to craft impactful brands while fostering an inclusive and innovative work environment.
“Magic Camp exists for one group only – the modern marketer,” Willis asserts. The agency’s ethos revolves around prioritizing clients’ needs, offering transparent solutions, and redefining the traditional agency-client relationship model. “Our industry is at an inflection point,” Willis remarks, highlighting the need for a fresh perspective and a departure from outdated practices.
Mandi Bright joins Willis as Chief Creative Officer. Bright brings a wealth of creative insight to Magic Camp and agency chops, which include The Mars Agency, FCB, and Leo Burnett. “Creativity is not just about the work,” Bright emphasizes, “but our approach, processes, and team dynamics.” Magic Camp’s approach to creativity is rooted in strategic agility and a commitment to driving tangible business results for clients.
What sets Magic Camp apart is its dedication to nurturing its team members. Clear growth opportunities and a supportive work culture are integral to Magic Camp’s ethos, enabling its team to thrive and deliver exceptional results. I asked Holly and Mandi about their plans to shake up the advertising culture through Magic Camp.
(This interview has been condensed for length and clarity).
Your new agency name is particularly intriguing; what’s the story behind Magic Camp?
We set out to build a brand around an idea, not around specific people. We wanted the name to encapsulate the ideal, aspirational environment we’re trying to cultivate. Each member of our team and every partner should be able to consistently contribute to defining this environment. Our vision, mission, and values revolve around continual positive improvement and evolution of our work, team members, and operational systems.
Magic Camp embodies this ethos.
“Camp” holds a special place in many people’s hearts – it’s often where children first experience the freedom to explore their imaginations without constraints. At camp, you’re encouraged to learn, embrace bravery, embark on adventures, and have fun. By the end of camp, you’ve made friends, built new skills, and found confidence that positively impacts the rest of your life.
But crucially, at camp, you always do this as a community. We aspire to foster this sense of community, where each member, including our clients, contributes to creating moments of magic. However, you can only experience magic if you believe it exists and you know to look for it.
Given Magic Camp’s emphasis on creativity as a growth accelerator, how do you ensure that your agency’s processes and approaches foster diversity and inclusion within the broader advertising ecosystem?
Fostering inclusion is a critical component of why we started the agency in the first place—we built it into our vision and mission statement. We don’t want diversity and inclusion to be performative, which, unfortunately, has become so pervasive in our industry, particularly in the last few years. Our environment and our operations must be inclusive by design.
To do that, we spent a lot of time researching the systemic issues that make inclusion challenging, nearly impossible, in the traditional agency model. Building our model, we started our operations from scratch and looked at nearly every process with fresh eyes and thinking. Then, we met with inclusion experts throughout our development process to hold us accountable.
We’re small and just getting started, and we recognize that it gives us the benefit of starting over instead of fixing a decades-old issue and navigating a complicated infrastructure. We truly believe that diverse perspectives and experiences lead to better outcomes. So, we must prioritize those perspectives by recruiting differently, elevating diverse employees and partners, and continuing to work with inclusion experts.
With your extensive experience in the industry, how do you actively address and combat entrenched gender biases and stereotypes within Magic Camp and in your interactions with clients?
Inclusion is one of the most important components of our business. It impacts every part of our operational model, which looks radically different from the typical agency. Also, we’re two women who have seen first-hand how the current system puts incredible pressure on marginalized groups to fit into a system that wasn’t designed for them. Many talented people have to leave the system when they go through a significant life change. And this disproportionately impacts minorities and women. Unfortunately, this industry is no longer a business that is known for being able to build a lifelong career AND a rich personal life.
It took a lot of homework and creative problem-solving to create a different model that gives folks the ability to lean in when they’re in career-growth mode but doesn’t penalize you when you want and need more balance. We staff our teams entirely differently and encourage individual-contributor roles instead of forcing management to be the only way you can “move up.” We offer a four-day work week, remote work, sabbaticals for all employees, two weeks of paid vacation before you start, and fully covered insurance. We’re also looking into how we can pay for access to financial experts to help our team members build personal wealth. If we ask our team members to show up consistently at an elite level, we also need to give them the ability to properly rest and recover without sacrificing why they’re working hard in the first place. We recognize that we’ve hired people for a job; it’s not our business to dictate how they live the rest of their lives.
As we build more resources, we plan to invest them back into the growth and success of our whole team instead of only building wealth for the founders or leadership.
If a prospective client, partner, or team member doesn’t believe in these values and how they can successfully impact their own businesses and lives, we’re not a good fit for them. Our model isn’t for everyone, and we’re okay with that.
Given Magic Camp’s focus on redefining the traditional agency-client relationship, how do you believe your approach differs from the conventional agency model?
We started by acknowledging how hard the role of the modern marketer is. A good portion of the advertising industry doesn’t do that, and most relationships begin with unspoken and unacknowledged tension. Instead, we take the same approach as we do to differentiate our clients’ businesses: know why you exist, embrace what makes you different, and take a consumer-first approach. We exist for our clients, the modern marketer, whose role is arguably the most complex within organizations. They want to make a big impact but work in a challenging, ever-changing environment. They must consistently deliver top-line growth to keep their job, let alone “succeed.” We looked at every component of our business through the lens of this client, giving us a lot of clarity. On the surface, the client may be buying the same deliverable, but the process will be vastly different for everyone involved. The ultimate goal is eliminating friction and consistently using creativity as a business multiplier. With that approach, we realized that common internal agency issues and client-agency problems would no longer be significant pain points.
Their success is the reason we exist. So, we designed our processes, deliverables, and communication systems with that in mind. We invite collaboration and share responsibility for decision-making (both good and bad). We sell deliverables, not FTEs and hours. We welcome feedback and have formalized it in our operations so that we can invest and innovate from those data points. Creating connections and building trust is at the forefront of everything we do.
Why did you decide to build Magic Camp from scratch despite your successful careers in established agencies?
Holly Willis: I’m a disruptor at heart, which has made me both an incredible and terrible account person. I’ve always valued creativity – my mom is an artist, my dad is an engineer, and I trained to be an opera singer. But I also love business and am good at math, so I understood that to “move up” in account management, you must be efficient and deliver profit. I was always working to find that balance while still getting great results for our clients. I struggled to find that consistent opportunity in advertising without burning out. But I’ve also continued to love so much of what this industry promises – the ability to positively impact culture and be a part of something that has a lasting impact. And I love so many of the people in this industry.
Then, I had a unique opportunity to rethink the model and design an agency that prioritized people and positive impact. I also had to reevaluate myself and the legacy I wanted to leave behind. Through personal growth and honest reflection, I realized how I benefited from and contributed to perpetuating that model.
Finding someone who shared those same values and passion for the industry was critical when looking for a founding partner. Someone who cares about the group’s success and that people love to work for and with. Someone who builds trust but isn’t afraid to challenge the status quo and me so that we hold each other accountable to the bigger vision and not our egos. And that’s Mandi.
As Magic Camp unfurls its banner, it signals a bright step towards redefining the landscape of advertising agencies.
Portrait photography by Steven Piper. Logo design by Enlisted Design.