It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it.
By Robert McCulloch
We know Bananas. We like the guys and have watched what they’re doing with interest.
I actually came across their recent IDIDTHAT article because it appeared alongside our own Woolworths Made in Italy piece. Both were commissioned editorials, something I still find slightly uncomfortable. Paying to beat your own chest in public feels a little bit weird, but that’s another Field Note.
Bananas aren’t even two years old. They’re working with gigantic brands. They’ve won the best this, a top that, an Agency of the Year, and the campaign stats are eye-watering. More than enough evidence that Justin and his merry men know what they’re doing.
When MarkLives named them 2025 SME Agency of the Year, it said Bananas had shown that “small focused teams can deliver world-class work.” That’s the part that interests me.
Not simply how well they’re doing, but why it seems to be working.
At the centre of Bananas is a small group of very experienced people who stay close to the actual work. Then, depending on the problem, they bring the right specialists in around them.
That feels remarkably familiar, because it is precisely how we work at The Video Cartel.
We are four people at the centre of the business, but between us there is a fairly unusual spread of experience. Producing in just about all its forms. Directing. Creative direction. Writing. Business development. Sales.
A tonne of cross-pollinating, accumulated experience.
We definitely don’t always agree and quite frankly, as long as you ‘Don’t Be a Dick’ it’s a very good thing. It keeps you on your toes, forces you to sense-check yourself and keeps the thinking tight.
We also know our lane. And we know when we need specialists and we are very fortunate in that we have plenty of those.
For years, being small could feel like something you needed to apologise for. Increasingly, I believe it might actually be the advantage.
Less hierarchy. Fewer people passing information between one another. Senior people staying close to the problem. And the ability to bring exceptional specialists into a project precisely when they’re needed.
Bananas are obviously operating on the agency side of the fence, and we sit predominantly on the production side. There are also very good people running very big agencies, pitching for enormous accounts and doing things I don’t begin to understand.
That’s simply not the field we’re playing on.
What I do understand is production. The scale of the work we do. The need for agility. The value of experience. And what happens when you put the right small group of people around a problem and let them get on with it.
We’ve been obsessing over our own model at The Video Cartel for a while now. And this idea keeps ringing true.
You’ll see it running through a lot of our up and coming Field Notes. The quality of advertising. Production partners. The strength of small teams. How to get the best out of talented people and, just as importantly, how those people get the best out of you.
Perhaps the interesting creative businesses of the next decade won’t necessarily be the biggest ones.
Maybe they’ll be small groups of very experienced people, with different strengths, surrounded by exceptional networks, staying close to the work and moving quickly around interesting problems.
Bananas certainly seem to be making a pretty compelling case for it.
And it’s a model we recognise.
