Former Meta Creative Shop creative director Julie Seal today launched Republic of Imagination (RoI), a craft-focused social agency designed to change how brands connect. The new agency solves one of marketing’s biggest problems: the flood of low-quality content dragging brands down. The new agency, that connects brands with 10 million craft-led creators worldwide (not influencers), puts quality and ideas first, over follower counts.
“Social advertising needs to change. Overworked in-house social media managers or one-person content creators juggle strategy, ideation, scripting, filming, and editing everything themselves. Or social agencies struggle to meet the needs of the brands (and their tiny budgets),” Seal stated.
“Brands chase vanity metrics of likes and shares, instead of actual brand impact. And automated solutions and AI apps create a race to the bottom, while content calendars prioritize quantity over quality. Social has been stuck in a loop of low craft and budget crumbs,” Seal continues. “But social is no longer a side show – it’s the main event, and it deserves better.”
Results prove the power of quality over quantity. High-quality creative ads generate more than 4x as much profit as low-quality ones (*Kantar ROMI report). Yet most brands stay trapped in a cycle of generic content calendar filler or shopping channel style influencer content.
RoI curates from 10 million social creators worldwide – not influencers who are about amplification, but skilled craftspeople: illustrators, animators, motion graphics artists, CGI specialists, typographers, comedians, musicians, and AI artists chosen for their creative abilities, not audience size.
Each project pairs creators with international creative directors who develop ideas and maintain standards, plus producers who ensure seamless execution to deliver higher quality more efficiently than traditional agencies are able to.
The launch comes as brand–creator collaborations increase by 45% per year (Market.us), with companies such as Unilever putting over 50% of ad spend into creator work (e-Marketer) the creator economy could approach half‑a‑trillion dollars by 2027 (Goldman Sachs).
“Every brand talks about wanting to stand out, then creates the same as everyone else,” Seal added. “We love influencer content, but it’s not the only opportunity in the Creator economy, we’re offering access to a hidden creative workforce that’s been overlooked because they don’t have millions of followers. But what they do have is the ability to create content that makes people stop scrolling and say ‘wow.’ And what I love is that they can be anywhere in the world, any age, any stage in their career, any creative discipline. The in-crowd aren’t what matters here.”
As AI-auto-generated content floods feeds, RoI makes a bold bet: human creativity, thoughtful production, and strong ideas will win.
RoI has already engaged with Meta, Pinterest, TikTok, Google, Amazon, Diageo, and other leading brands and agencies and has won two clients even prior to the agency’s launch.
Julie Seal brings 15 years of agency experience (Mother, W+K, R/GA) plus 7.5 years inside Meta’s Creative Shop, where she taught brands what good looks like on social media across all industry sectors. She’s taught creative direction for D&AD, judged awards, and creates content as @the_chronicoptimst on Tik Tok and Instagram. As a proudly disabled founder, Seal advocates for disabled advertising professionals through leading Bloom Disability and Ad Disableds groups, making this one of the very few disabled-woman led agencies worldwide. Her newsletter chronicling the agency’s founding, Diary of a start-up optimist, can be read here.
