Founded on 30+ years of experience working with the world’s biggest brands
The Wild Ones Agency, Boutique Media Agency based in Sydney
Helping clients in the US, Europe and Australia
Why we Started
We started The Wild Ones because premium and purpose-led brands deserve a media agency that puts their business first.
Agency holding companies signed clients to hit their own revenue targets, then staffed accounts with whoever was availabl, not whoever was right. Senior strategists showed up to the pitch, won the business, and disappeared. The people who actually ran your account were often one or two years into their career, learning on your budget.
The metrics agencies reported were designed to make the agency look good, not to tell you whether your business was actually growing. Impressions, video views, last-touch attribution — numbers that fill a dashboard but rarely answer the question your CFO is actually asking: is this spend driving revenue?
And behind the scenes, talented people were being overworked and burned out because the holding company model demands it. Bill more hours. Run more accounts. Protect the margin. The business that mattered most was always the agency’s, not the client’s.
So we built something different.
The Wild Ones Agency is a boutique, senior-only media agency based in Sydney. We work with premium brands, purpose-led businesses, and government organisations who are serious about turning media investment into commercial growth.
We built the agency around three commitments that directly address what we saw broken in the industry:
No team churn. The team that sits in your pitch is the team that works on your business. Every strategist has a minimum of 10 years’ experience.
Full transparency. Our pricing is clear. Our reporting tells you what’s actually happening, not what makes us look good. If something isn’t working, you’ll know the same day we do.
Your business metrics, not ours. We measure what matters to your business: revenue, customer acquisition cost, showroom traffic, brand consideration, and margin. The numbers your leadership team cares about.
About the Founder.
Elaine Quirke has sat in every chair in the media industry. She built The Wild Ones from all three.
Before founding The Wild Ones, Elaine spent over two decades working across editorial, publishing and media agencies — building the kind of cross-industry expertise that most media professionals never get the chance to develop.
She started on the publisher side as Commercial Editor at The Mirror, led luxury for Mindshare in Londo where she ran the Global Rolex account, then moved to The Wall Street Journal as Director of Fashion and Luxury, where she worked with the world’s most prestigious brands on premium advertising and media partnerships. She saw firsthand how attention is created, what makes people stop, read, and care.
Agency-side, Elaine led content and partnerships strategy at Wavemaker (WPP) and managed client accounts for luxury and premium brands at both WPP and Publicis — including Cartier, Burberry, Samsung, Visa, and Paramount. She saw how attention is bought, how it’s wasted, and where the holding company model consistently fails mid-market clients.
She then moved into media owneras Head of Digital Audio at Nova Entertainment, building the audiences and advertising products that brands were paying to reach. She understood how attention is built at scale, and where the gaps were between what media owners sold and what advertisers actually needed.
Then things changed.
Elaine was made redundant while pregnant. The industry she’d given 20 years to decided her timing was inconvenient.
Instead of going back into a system she knew was broken, she built the agency she wished she’d worked at, and the agency she wished her clients had access to.
The Attention Engine
Drawing on experience from every side of the media industry, Elaine developed The Attention Engine™, a proprietary framework for designing attention systems that connect media investment to commercial outcomes. It’s built on a simple observation: impressions are not attention, and attention that doesn’t drive business results isn’t worth paying for.
The Attention Engine brings together strategic planning, creative direction, intelligent media buying, and measurement that goes beyond platform vanity metrics to track what actually matters: revenue, customer acquisition, and brand growth.
Elaine is a ReLove ambassador, supporting ethical and sustainable business practices. She is an advocate for experienced professionals — particularly women and working parents — who have been sidelined by an industry that confuses availability with ability.
