If a brief for a $50,000 campaign for a local newspaper landed in the boardroom of a multinational agency network in Sydney, there's a chance the strategy suits would glance at the price tag and shuffle the file off to a junior team to come back with something "cheap and cheerful". In fact, it's likely the brief might not even make it to the creative department, much less John Kane's old desk at Leo Burnett, Sydney, where he worked as head of art before ditching the agency world to start boutique creative consultancy, Happy Soldiers.

Inspired by creative collective The Glue Society, with whom he'd worked on a Canon campaign (his final job at Leo B), Kane, an Irish expat living in Australia, founded his own company in February 2006. Originally a one-man outfit called "I Am Kane"; he later switched monikers when the business started to grow. Working for himself has simplified his life: gone are layers of approvals, bureaucracy, ego jockeying and meetings. His website tells prospective clients, "nothing gets lost in translation."

"The way I pitch [Happy Soldiers] to people is: Look, you could have a senior team here working solely on your projects for 40 days a year and that would cost you the equivalent of a junior team at an ad agency. If you come to us and you take 40 days a year, you could get 10 top projects out of that," he explains over the phone from his office in Surrey Hills, a Sydney suburb.

Kane isn't the only creative who's jumped ship to start up an independent consultancy. In the past two years, Australia's ad community has watched several top-tier creatives leave the agency world to open indie shops with fun, playful names seemingly designed to flaunt a renegade élan: Southpaw, 12:20, Day and Age, Three Drunk Monkeys and Brain Surgery.

The creatives behind these companies say they've attracted sizeable accounts, sometimes by way of freelance work with traditional agencies, sometimes directly through clients, but more often than not, by way of Host, a mid-size Sydney-based ad agency that operates without in-house creative. Instead, the agency's strategists draw from this pool of independent creative talent to execute campaigns for its 15 clients, including Virgin Mobile, Ikea, Yahoo!, Air New Zealand and Fairfax Media.

"I could see the best creative people were going to be more inclined to live outside of agencies. That's particularly true within the Australian marketplace," says Anthony Freedman, founder and CEO of Host. "There are fewer agencies that provide great creative people with opportunities that would be in line with some of the best creative opportunities you would find around the world."

Earlier this year, Host approached Kane with a brief for the Sun-Herald newspaper's Sunday edition; a job he says exemplifies the benefits of this alternate model. "When we work with Host, we become the creative directors, as such," explains Kane. "The job is your responsibility. If it's wrong, it's your problem. If it's right, you get credit for it."

The Sun-Herald campaign was not intended for TV. The paper gives away free DVDs in its Sunday edition and wanted to put "a piece of communication" at the beginning of the reel, extolling the brand's virtues. Kane thought the idea pointless since the DVD's viewers had already paid for the paper, and suggested filming a brand piece. Happy Soldiers came up with "Skate" and "Trampoline" - two simple 15-second clips showing readers lazily enjoying Sunday, oblivious to skateboarders and kids jumping on a trampoline. The client liked the spots and eventually ran them in cinemas before creating a third, "Seagulls" starring Kane as a reader, which aired on TV.

"At the end of the day, budget didn't matter," says Kane. "We had to create something amazing because if we didn't, we wouldn't get another job from Host."

Host provides Happy Soldiers with 60% of its business, adds Kane. The rest of his work comes via agencies in Dublin and Geneva and two small, local clients. Essentially, Host, along with multimedia collective The Glue Society, has inspired creatives to exit the comparatively rigid agency world.

Three Drunk Monkeys is former Saatchi & Saatchi, Sydney creative team Justin Drape and Scott Nowell and creative Mark Green. Feeling they'd hit a ceiling at the agency, they left. The outfit now has nine staffers and is in the midst of developing a TV series and releasing a book for a local children's charity this Christmas.

Another new shop is 12:20, founded by Christian Finucane and Jon Skinner, founding CDs at Whybin TBWA in Sydney, where they worked on Apple and PlayStation before leaving in 2004. Their latest project is SuperVirals.com, a viral aggregator site that allows creative types to upload videos for brands and win rewards in the process. "You see this whole tidal wave of people developing their own ideas online and we wanted to be part of that," says Finucane.

Like Happy Soldiers, they work with Host, which opened in 2000 and operates under the principle that creativity should not be the sole domain of a creative department. In structuring the agency, Freedman also recognized that planners and project managers see their roles as keeping creative ideas alive.

This structure, he says, allows Host to plan strategy across a broader media landscape. If a traditional agency invests in creative teams specializing in TV spots, that company will naturally recommend TV rather than say, sculpture, experiential or mobile routes.

"But we don't sell ourselves on our methodology," says Freedman. "Ultimately we are defined by our output. What we focus on are the principles of our approach and the work we've produced in the past. If the client shares our thinking, we work together."

Seven years ago, Host had four employees. Today, it has upwards of 60 staffers and 15 accounts, including recently-won Bank West, a Perth-based bank that plans to roll out 150 new branches nationwide over the next two years.

Freedman believes the agency's watershed moment came in 2003, when The Glue Society creative directed a Host campaign for Virgin Mobile's five cent text rate. Glue invented Warren, a "loveable loser" looking for a date, who invites eligible Australians to text him and take advantage of the bargain. The campaign won over the public, won the Grand Prix at Cannes for Direct and, a year later, another iteration of the campaign featuring 5 Cent, a spoof of rapper 50 Cent, nabbed a Titanium Lion.

Today, The Glue Society is one of the most sought after creative shops/directors in Australia and is frequently name-checked by all the indie creative companies popping up in Sydney. Founded by Freedman's brother Gary and Jonathan Kneebone, who met while working at Young & Rubicam, Sydney, The Glue Society now has an office in New York and will celebrate its 10-year anniversary in February. Glue's recent projects include developing a TV series for a cable station in the US, directing a series of TV spots for the Thai market, building a Comme des Garçons-style guerilla store for Kiwi supermodel Elle Macpherson's lingerie line and placing billboards in Iceland, India and Iraq to draw attention to an Australian comedy show's new timeslot.

"I get the craziest phone calls from people nowadays," says Kneebone. "You start to do jobs you never thought yourself capable of doing. What we were always trying to do was create a working structure that allows us to do all the things we've wanted to do, but remain in advertising."

Both Kneebone and @radical.media, Sydney managing director Rob Galluzzo, which reps Glue worldwide for spots, say Australian marketers are increasingly willing to go directly to independent creative outlets. But Galluzzo adds he's still not seeing the new creative-turned-director outfits commanding the kind of TV budgets big directors do. Most are still directing short films in the $15,000 range, he says.

"They're not directors - they're creatives that want to turn their sights to directing," he says. "Glue has really concentrated on directing and they've risen to the top and broken through as directors. If I was an agency, why would I get other creatives to direct my ad? I'd just direct it myself."

As creatives, however, the small shops are attracting million-dollar projects. "It's dangerous to say this part of the industry is totally low budget," says Revolver EP Michael Ritchie. "Some of these guys are pulling in significant projects that are well-funded and sometimes worldwide."

Revolver recently filmed a $1 million BMW campaign with the only indie consultancy in Melbourne, Day and Age, aka former M&C Saatchi, Melbourne creative directors Paul Taylor and Tony Banks. Working through BADJAR Ogilvy, the campaign has since been sold to Germany, South Africa and the United States.

Day and Age started 10 months ago and has kept a low profile. Like The Glue Society, Taylor is weary of pigeon-holing himself in one medium. He talks excitedly of product design, TV spots, books, short films and packaging design. As CD and head of art at a traditional agency, Taylor says he would have had 18 briefs on his desk at a given time and no time to realize anything remotely non-traditional.

"Here, you don't have the long lead times you have in the States or the UK," he says. "So you'd say, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could do X, Y and Z for this client?' But the reality is the media has been bought, you're already behind the eight-ball."

While these entrepreneurs set their own creative parameters, the traditional agencies they've left behind have noticed. Advertising in Australia over the next year will likely become even more interesting now that Publicis Mojo has hired ex-Fallon, London creative Micah Walker to head up its Sydney office; Leo Burnett, Sydney's Titanium-winning Earth Hour is poised to spread overseas, and Saatchi, Sydney ECD David Nobay is headed to a new venture, as yet unannounced, in '08.

For Leo Burnett's part, it just wrapped a massive integrated effort for McDonald's, which asked consumers to name the fast-food chain's latest promotional burger. The "Name It Burger" campaign sold more than a million burgers, says CD Michael Spirkovski, who once ran his own shop with his creative partner. "The role of TV is changing - it's becoming more of a teaser," he says. "It's nowhere near becoming obsolete, I think we're redefining TV in Australia."

Interestingly Spirkovski says campaigns by Host and The Glue Society have directly impacted agency thinking because "they deliver above and beyond every major multinational network in Australia."

While it took The Glue Society several years of ups and downs to prove itself, Kneebone, a British expat, says being a creative entrepreneur in the Australian market has completely changed his life.

"Australians are good at putting their own personal stamp on something. [To work here], you need to have a sense of yourself because you are far removed from the world," he says. "I've become more myself - not just personally, but completely through our work. I cannot imagine that, if I'd stayed in the UK, I would get this dangerously large amount of rope to hang myself with."

@radical.media, Sydney http://www.radicalmedia.com.au
12:20 http://www.1220.com.au
Day and Age http://www.dayandage.com.au
The Glue Society http://www.gluesociety.com.au
Happy Soldiers http://www.happysoldiers.com.au
Host http://www.hostville.com.au
Leo Burnett, Sydney http://www.leoburnett.com.au
Revolver Film http://www.revolverfilm.com
Three Drunk Monkeys http://www.threedrunkmonkeys.com.au