Swan Studio began as a creative-only social agency. Clients wanted it to run the spend behind its work, but the team needed accountability to business outcomes rather than isolated channel metrics.
The idea
Put media buying beside the creative team so one room links business goals, channel spend, performance data and the next creative iteration.
The co-founders hired Vatsal Prasad to lead advisory-led media, shared accounts with creative, bought across Meta, TikTok and Google, then added Snapchat, Pinterest and Reddit while building in-house planning and testing tools.
The division passed seven figures in annual revenue in under a year. Named clients reported about 60% more monthly quotes, 5× revenue and 400% more paid members.
Swan Studio started as a creative-only social agency. When clients asked it to put media spend behind the work, co-founders Josh Israeli and Dean Gruskin added a paid media division rather than sending the brief to a separate media agency.
They hired Vatsal Prasad to lead advisory-led media buying. The media and creative teams sat on the same accounts, read results together and moved the next creative round into production as soon as data showed what was or was not working.
The team stayed channel agnostic, tying allocation to the client's P&L or revenue target and building proprietary tools for planning, testing and scaling. In less than a year, the division passed seven figures in annual revenue; clients cited gains including 60% more monthly quotes, 5× revenue and 400% more paid members.
Clients wanted one team to connect the creative idea with the media spend behind it.
Shared accounts let performance data change the next creative iteration without waiting in another agency's queue.
A channel-agnostic team could double down on the routes delivering the best return rather than defending a platform specialty.
Holding the agency to the same business numbers as the client made accountability concrete.
When creative is the biggest performance lever, put the people who buy distribution beside the people who make the work, and measure both against the same business outcome.
Swan Studio said the model changed the kind of brief it was considered for: brands began bringing it conversations that might previously have gone to a media agency and a creative agency separately. The agency planned to keep investing people and money behind the combined division.
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
The sources
- Swan Studio’s paid media division grows to 7 figures in less than a year Campaign Brief · campaignbrief.com ·