Creative Talk with Phoebe Smith

This month, the Creative Store talks with Phoebe Smith, partner at innovation studio Previously Unavailable. The team self-profess they are difficult to tightly define .

What is the birth story of Previously Unavailable?

Previously Unavailable was started by our founding partner, James Hurman, in 2014. He left advertising to start a new creative company that helps innovative companies create new things. That’s where the name came from (it was a phrase he heard a radio announcer use one day).

Since then, we’ve grown into a team of 19, always chipping away at new ways of doing things from our office in Grey Lynn, Auckland.

You work with a great range of clients. How do you consider which clients you want to work with?

We feel very lucky when it comes to our clients! Beyond the vibe check, we focus on long-term value creation, which gives us a great lens for thinking about both people and projects.

The sweet spot tends to be great founders or teams doing something new to push a category forward, or even creating a whole new category altogether.

Another big factor is the role of brand — we’re big on brand. I’m like a small child when brand has the potential to make a big difference for growth and impact. If clients aren’t at least brand-curious, it’s probably not right for us.

I love that you say no to work. Why is that?

Life’s too short to do bad work with the wrong clients haha. But truly, nothing makes me sadder than giving my shower thoughts to a painful project or process.

We’re pretty self-aware about where we can add the most value, and we operate with high trust. If that alignment isn’t there, we’ll pass to save ourselves the pain down the track.

It also means we don’t pitch for work, do ‘quick fixes’ for surgical needs, or take on projects where we feel like a supplier. We pour so much heart and energy into what we do — sometimes with an equity stake — so we try to be honest about whether we’re a good fit. We’re not for everyone and we’re ok with that.

Along with the design and agency offerings, you are part venture studio and innovation engine – tell us more.

This is something we’ve been evolving alongside our consultancy work, and it really plays into long-term value creation. It’s a way for us to focus even more on work we love, and turn ideas into companies that genuinely shape the future.

We’ve got quite a mix going on! We invest in some of the clients we work with and have our Brand Fund with Icehouse Ventures. We’ve also partnered with TRA on Tracksuit and Ideally, which led to New + Improved, a martech-focused venture studio (the next one launches in a couple of weeks).

We’re also building a venture studio in the consumer goods space — which is an awesome cross-pollination between our innovation, strategy, and design teams.

It’s all a big experiment, and we know things could change at any moment. For now though, we’re doubling down and going full noise on what we believe is right for us.

How is AI being integrated into your work as a creative agency?

We use AI every day — developing AI-centric products in our ventures, stress-testing and sound-boarding brand thinking, generating images, using design tools through to Notion AI to help with ops excellence.

‘Integration’ perhaps sounds more formal than it is. Like everyone else, we’re trying to keep up, in continuous test-and-learn mode as we go and exploring how it might change and improve how we work.

What type of projects would you love to get amongst?

I’m big on social impact, so I’d love to work with more start-ups where brand can drive social good alongside commercial viability — things like health tech, education, financial inclusion, or female or minority-led enterprises.

If we could do a dance-related brand I’d also love that! I’ll just put that out there.

You have done excellent pro bono work for the legal charity Tika, whose vision is a world where taking legal action against sexual harm is accessible, supported, and transformative, reducing reoffending rates and creating safer communities. How have you supported Tika?

We love working with Tika! Ali Mau and Zoë Lawton are such formidable founders, and the way they’re using tech to help solve a complex and hard problem with so much care and compassion is pretty epic. They’re a much-needed legal piece of the puzzle that helps people take action in the sexual harm space.

They came to PU wanting help with how to talk about what they were doing, so we worked on their brand strategy and identity design. The nuance and complexity made it such a satisfying creative challenge. We really wanted to bring a hopeful and proactive brand into a category that has until now been more focussed on the trauma response.

Do you have a firm favourite project?

Tika would be right up there for me. The combo of innovation, social good and brand is my happy place. Then to have founders who are amazing at what they do, who trust us with what we do — we’re still supporting them now and it feels like we’re part of something special and much bigger than ourselves.

Do you find there is a good supply of creative talent within New Zealand – or do you reach out overseas?

All of our recent hires at PU have been from within New Zealand. That said, we’re always open to hiring from overseas, and we’ve often interviewed people looking to move back here. Because of our size and the type of studio we are, we’re usually after a very specific fit — so we’re happy to wait for the right person, whether they’re here or abroad.

How do you cultivate a positive culture at Previously Unavailable?

We have two virtues that lay the foundation for our culture — those are being kind and wise. It’s the little ways of looking out for one another, and the wisdom of seeing the bigger picture and acting accordingly.

PU has a 30-year plan, and part of that is creating a place people want to stay to do their best work. We aim to be a company in service of its people, not the other way around.

In practice, it’s always a work in progress (especially at our pace), but that’s part of the experiment. We also have some pretty special initiatives that are people-first and driven by generosity. There’ll be a book about that one day.

Any last words?

Live, laugh, love. Just kidding — but if you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading.

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