Creativity could be a career and the idea stuck
Some careers begin not with a plan but with a moment of recognition — a door opening onto a world that suddenly makes sense. For Marijana Simunovic, co-founder of Weave, that moment came during a Year 10 work placement at an advertising agency, where she understood for the first time that creativity could be more than a private pursuit. Decades later, her proudest achievement — the Tooheys rebrand for Lion — reflects the same conviction: that the best work emerges not from individual brilliance, but from the trust and friction of people thinking together.
- A teenager walks into an agency on a careers counsellor's suggestion and feels, almost immediately, that she has found her place in the world.
- The tension in her proudest project — the Tooheys rebrand — was real: how do you modernise an icon without erasing the memory and meaning it carries for millions of Australians?
- Her answer was collaborative process over individual vision, leaning into the trust between a strong client and a strong team to push, refine, and ultimately land something that honoured the past while facing forward.
- Now leading Weave, Simunovic is navigating an industry that increasingly mistakes speed for quality — and her founding philosophy pushes back, insisting that the right people in the right room still matters most.
Marijana Simunovic traces her entire career to a single afternoon in Year 10, when a work experience placement — arranged almost casually by a careers counsellor — brought her inside an advertising agency for the first time. The energy of the place changed something in her. Ideas were moving, people were moving, and creativity was visibly, tangibly a profession. For someone who had always gravitated toward art, English, and storytelling, it was the moment those instincts found a direction larger than herself.
Now co-founder and managing director of Weave, she points to the Tooheys rebrand for Lion as the work she's most proud of — a choice that says something about her values. Tooheys is the kind of brand that lives in cultural memory, in habit, in the particular weight of affection Australians carry for it. Rebranding something like that demands both respect and courage: you must honour what came before while giving it the clarity to survive a changed world.
But what she emphasises most about the project isn't the outcome — it's the process. A great client, a great team, and genuine collaboration created the conditions for the work to be good. The best ideas, she argues, don't emerge from isolation or from a single brilliant mind; they come from the friction and generosity of a group that trusts each other enough to think together.
That conviction now shapes how she leads Weave. In an industry where speed is often mistaken for quality and production pressure can flatten creative process into something mechanical, her insistence on collaboration and the energy of the right people in the right room represents a deliberate counter-philosophy — one she first glimpsed standing in an agency hallway, and has been building on ever since.
Marijana Simunovic remembers the moment she walked through an agency door in Year 10. She was there for work experience—a suggestion from her careers counsellor—and she had only the vaguest sense of what advertising actually was. But the moment she stepped inside, something shifted. The energy hit her first: the ideas moving fast, the people moving faster, the hum of a place where things were being made. She realized, standing in that hallway, that creativity wasn't something you did in a notebook or a sketchbook on your own time. It could be a job. It could be a life.
That realization stuck with her. Looking back now as co-founder and managing director of Weave, Simunovic traces her entire career to that single afternoon—to the intersection of storytelling, creativity, and culture that had always pulled at her. In school, she'd gravitated toward art, English, reading, creative writing. The subjects that asked you to make something, to tell something, to understand how meaning moves through the world. But it wasn't until she saw an agency in motion that she understood those instincts could be channeled into something larger than herself.
When asked about the work she's most proud of, Simunovic points to the Tooheys rebrand she led for Lion. It's a choice that reveals something about how she thinks. Tooheys is an iconic Australian brand—the kind of thing that lives in people's memory, their habits, their sense of what beer tastes like. That weight of history and affection creates a particular kind of responsibility. You can't just erase what came before. You have to honor it while also pushing it forward, giving it the clarity and confidence it needs to survive in a different world.
What makes her proudest about the project, though, isn't just the final design. It's the process that got there. She emphasizes this deliberately: a great client, a great team, a genuinely collaborative approach. The work was good because the people involved trusted each other enough to think together, to push back, to refine. That's where the best work happens, she says—not in isolation, not in the mind of one brilliant person, but in the friction and generosity of a group moving toward something together.
It's a philosophy that likely shapes how she runs Weave now. The agency she co-founded exists in a world where creativity is increasingly commodified, where speed is often mistaken for quality, where the pressure to produce can flatten the process into something mechanical. But Simunovic's insistence on the value of collaboration, on the energy that comes from the right people in the right room, suggests a different approach. She learned it that first day, watching an agency work. She's been building on it ever since.
Notable Quotes
I remember walking in and feeling the energy of the place – the ideas, the pace, the people.— Marijana Simunovic, on her first day at an ad agency
The best work happens when there's a great client, a great team, and a genuinely collaborative approach.— Marijana Simunovic, on the Tooheys rebrand process
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
You describe that first day at the agency as a revelation—but what specifically made you think "this is what I want to do" rather than just "this is interesting"?
I think it was recognizing that the things I loved—storytelling, art, ideas—weren't going to be solitary pursuits. They were going to be collaborative, urgent, alive. That energy was contagious.
A lot of people walk into agencies and see chaos. You saw energy. What's the difference?
Maybe it's what you're looking for. I was already drawn to creativity. What I discovered was that creativity didn't have to be lonely or self-indulgent. It could serve something real—a brand, an audience, a culture.
You chose the Tooheys rebrand as your proudest work. That's a conservative choice for a creative—you could have picked something more experimental or bold.
Bold isn't always better. Tooheys had decades of meaning attached to it. The challenge was honoring that while making it relevant. That's harder than starting from scratch.
You keep returning to the team, the collaboration. Is that just how you talk, or is it genuinely where you think the best work comes from?
It's genuinely where it comes from. I've seen brilliant individuals produce mediocre work because they weren't in conversation with anyone. And I've seen ordinary ideas become extraordinary because the right people were pushing on them together.
What would you tell that Year 10 version of yourself if you could go back?
That the energy you felt that day—that's real. Hold onto it. And build a place where other people can feel it too.