Bec McCall left her group creative director position at HERO to open We Were Here, an independent creative studio with no disclosed backing, no announced client roster, and no heritage-network affiliation. The departure follows a pattern visible across Sydney and Melbourne creative markets since mid-2023, where senior creatives with 12-plus years inside agencies are launching boutique operations rather than moving laterally to competitor shops.
McCall spent multiple years at HERO, which operates under Publicis Groupe's Power One model in Australia. Her portfolio there included work across luxury automotive, spirits, and experiential retail—categories where creative directors typically command AU$280,000 to AU$420,000 in total compensation at group level inside major agencies. She previously held roles at agencies including DDB and Ogilvy, building a reputation for campaign work that performs in awards circuits while delivering commercial outcomes clients renew.
The launch matters because it reflects structural tension inside holding-company creative shops. Clients in premium categories increasingly want direct access to the senior creative making decisions, not presentations from account leads citing that person's involvement. Independent studios solve for this by eliminating organizational layers, but they also eliminate benefits infrastructure, legal departments, and new-business development teams. McCall's move suggests she valued control and client intimacy over the safety of a AU$40 billion revenue network. We Were Here has not announced partnerships with production houses, media agencies, or technology platforms—infrastructure that determines whether boutique studios can execute at scale or remain consultancies that outsource execution.
The timing aligns with visible cracks in Australia's agency landscape. Holding companies reduced headcount by an estimated 8-12% across Sydney and Melbourne offices between Q2 2023 and Q1 2024, with cuts concentrated in mid-level producer and account roles rather than senior creative or strategy positions. That creates opportunity for departing leaders to recruit talent at below-market rates, since redundancy packages provide financial runway. Worth noting: We Were Here has not disclosed funding, staff count, or office location. Studios that launch without announced clients typically operate on principal savings for 6-9 months before needing revenue.
Allocators with exposure to advertising holding companies or luxury hospitality groups should watch three developments. First, whether We Were Here announces founding clients within 90 days—studios that launch quietly often have handshake agreements in place, and early client announcements signal genuine traction versus aspiration. Second, whether HERO backfills McCall's group CD role or restructures around remaining leadership, which indicates whether Publicis views the Australian creative market as growth or harvest. Third, whether other HERO senior creatives follow McCall out within six months, which would suggest cultural fracture rather than individual ambition.
McCall's LinkedIn profile update went live 72 hours ago with no client work posted, no team announcements, and no studio location listed beyond "Sydney." The absence of detail is itself information.
The takeaway
Senior agency creative exits to launch independent studio with no disclosed clients or funding, reflecting structural shift toward direct client relationships over holding-company infrastructure.
Want the 60-second program for your specific event?
Enter your event and email — we build it and send the branded proposal before lunch. No obligation.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — your name imprinted on real authorized stock, your pick of 200+ brands and 70,000 products, shipped from one accountable house. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign.
200+authorized brands
70,000products · virtual proof on each
9 deskspublishing daily
1997one house, since
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
Built by the craft floor — apparel, media, packaging, and secure print.
This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori heritage press through approved vendors · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.