In a marketing landscape long governed by purchased scale, a 30-person London agency called We Are Different is quietly advancing a different thesis: that the attention which builds lasting brands cannot be bought, only earned. Stuart Terry has constructed his agency around the conviction that creators, communities, algorithms, and artificial intelligence have displaced paid media as the primary engines of discovery and trust. The clients who have found their way to him — FUJIFILM, Jack Daniel's, Spotify — are not simply seeking independence from network agencies; they are seeking an operating
We Are Different: How Indies Are Redefining Brand Growth Through Earned Attention
The most powerful attention isn't bought. It's earned.
Mark
When you say earned attention, what does that actually look like in practice? Is it just PR and influencer work rebranded?
Mimi
No. It's a completely different starting point. Instead of asking what advertisement we should make, we ask what would make someone care enough to talk about this. That changes everything about how you conceive the idea.
Mark
But doesn't every agency claim to do that? What's the structural difference?
Mimi
The difference is that earned thinking is baked into the creative process from day one. It's not something we add later. Our people are trained to think beyond channels. Our tools measure it. It's the operating system, not a layer on top.
Mark
You mentioned AI changing what machines understand about brands. That sounds abstract. What does that mean for a client?
Mimi
It means if someone asks an AI about your brand, what does that AI know? What does it trust? What will it recommend? Those answers are shaped by earned signals—what people say, what media covers you, what creators talk about. That's the new frontier.
Mark
So you're saying paid media is becoming less important?
Mimi
Not less important. Different. Paid media is still a tool. But it's not the starting point anymore. The starting point is: what would make this worth talking about? What would make it worth recommending? That's where growth actually happens now.
Mark
And the brands you're working with—FUJIFILM, Spotify, Jack Daniel's—they understand that shift?
Mimi
They're living it. They see communications as a growth lever, not an amplification function. They want ideas that move between media, creators, culture, real-world experiences. They're not looking for an indie agency. They're looking for an agency built for how influence actually works today.
El Pulso
- The traditional paid-media model that shaped decades of marketing is losing its primacy as consumers increasingly discover and validate brands through creators, communities, and AI-driven recommendations.
- We Are Different's challenge to the industry is structural, not cosmetic — earned thinking is wired into the creative process from day one, making it nearly impossible for legacy agencies to replicate without dismantling their core architecture.
- A new frontier is emerging around artificial intelligence: the question is no longer only what people say about a brand, but what machines learn, trust, and recommend based on those earned signals.
- A roster of ambitious global brands is voting with their briefs, choosing an agency of 30 people not for its size but for its alignment with where influence is actually heading.
- The agency's next phase targets deeper creative production, expanded influencer capabilities, and new measurement frameworks — with the stated ambition of enlarging the role of earned media across the entire industry, not just within its own walls.
In a marketing landscape long governed by purchased scale, a 30-person London agency called We Are Different is quietly advancing a different thesis: that the attention which builds lasting brands cannot be bought, only earned. Stuart Terry has constructed his agency around the conviction that creators, communities, algorithms, and artificial intelligence have displaced paid media as the primary engines of discovery and trust. The clients who have found their way to him — FUJIFILM, Jack Daniel's, Spotify — are not simply seeking independence from network agencies; they are seeking an operating model built for the world as it actually works now.
Stuart Terry has built We Are Different around a single, disruptive conviction: the attention that matters most cannot be purchased. For decades, paid media was the engine of modern marketing, with everything else orbiting around it. Terry's argument is that this world no longer holds. People now discover brands through creators and communities, validate them through reviews and search, and increasingly through what artificial intelligence tells them.
What distinguishes We Are Different isn't its independence but its operating system. Earned media — PR, social, influencer work — isn't bolted onto campaigns at the final stage; it is embedded in the creative process from the first day. The agency has built proprietary tools to bring commercial accountability to earned strategies, an architecture that larger agencies built around paid exposure would struggle to retrofit.
Terry is especially focused on AI's role in reshaping discovery. As consumers turn to AI with questions they once posed to Google or friends, the frontier of attention has shifted from what people say about a brand to what machines understand about a brand from what people say. We Are Different is investing in mapping this new influence ecosystem — how earned signals shape what AI knows, trusts, and ultimately recommends.
The client roster — FUJIFILM, Jack Daniel's, Spotify, Hinge — reflects who is buying this philosophy. These are brands that treat communications not as a support function but as a primary growth lever, seeking ideas that move fluidly across media, creators, culture, and real-world experience. The agency's ambition, Terry suggests, is not simply to grow We Are Different, but to grow the category itself — to shift how an entire industry understands where brand relevance actually comes from.
Stuart Terry sits at the center of a quiet but deliberate challenge to how the advertising industry thinks about growth. His agency, We Are Different, is a 30-person operation built on a single conviction: the attention that matters most cannot be purchased. It has to be earned.
The premise sounds simple until you understand what it displaces. For decades, modern marketing was constructed around a world where brands could buy scale—where paid media was the engine and everything else orbited around it. Terry's argument is that this world no longer exists. People now discover brands through creators and communities. They validate them through reviews, media, search results, and increasingly through what artificial intelligence tells them. The traditional advertising model, in other words, has become a secondary force in a landscape reshaped by earned signals and algorithmic recommendation.
What separates We Are Different from larger agencies isn't independence itself, but rather a fundamental operating system built around this reality. The company doesn't treat earned media—PR, social, influencer work—as an amplification layer bolted onto a campaign in its final stages. Instead, earned thinking is embedded into the creative process from the first day. The team is trained to think beyond traditional channel boundaries. They've built proprietary tools designed to bring rigor and commercial accountability to earned strategies. This architecture is difficult, perhaps impossible, to retrofit into an agency model built around paid exposure. It's the company's most significant competitive advantage.
Terry is particularly focused on how artificial intelligence is reshaping the discovery ecosystem. Consumers increasingly ask AI questions they once posed to Google, journalists, friends, or Reddit. This shift means the frontier of attention has moved beyond what people say about a brand to what machines understand about a brand from what people say. We Are Different is investing in understanding this new influence ecosystem—how earned signals shape what AI knows, trusts, and recommends. A 30-person agency can use AI to behave like a much larger operation, but Terry is more interested in helping brands understand how AI itself is changing the way people discover, evaluate, and ultimately choose them.
The client roster tells a story about who is buying this philosophy. FUJIFILM, Jack Daniel's, Spotify, and Hinge are not choosing We Are Different because it's independent. They're choosing it because the agency is built for where influence is actually heading. These are ambitious brands that see communications not as a support function but as a primary lever for growth. They want ideas that can move fluidly between media, creators, social, culture, and real-world experiences to earn influence and trust at scale. Independence is a strength, but it's not the reason they're here.
The next phase of growth, Terry suggests, isn't measured in headcount or revenue alone. We Are Different is investing in deeper creative and production capabilities, new influencer offerings, and new ways of understanding and measuring influence in an AI-shaped world. The ambition is to prove that earned-first thinking can solve larger brand and business problems. In doing so, the agency aims to expand the role communications plays in marketing itself. The goal isn't simply to make We Are Different bigger. It's to make earned bigger—to shift how an entire industry thinks about where brand relevance and growth actually come from.
Citas Notables
Earned isn't an amplification layer we bolt onto a campaign at the end. It's the creative operating system from the beginning.— Stuart Terry, Founder and Director, We Are Different
Clients are choosing us because our offering better reflects how influence and brand growth works today.— Stuart Terry
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