Sydney independent digital agency, Wonderful, has launched its annual initiative, Wonderful Possibilities, providing AU$25,000 of strategy, UX, design and technology services to an Australian organisation creating positive social impact, as part of its new positioning of solving digital problems rather than selling solutions. The offer applies to not-for-profits, social enterprises, healthcare and education providers, community groups and purpose-led businesses. 

Wonderful Possibilities is the first iteration of the agency’s new Digital experiences that move organisations forward positioning, that moves Wonderful from leading with digital solutions such as websites, platforms and UX projects, to helping brands identify and solve the real business problems behind the brief.

Matt Barbelli, Wonderful founder and managing director said the new approach came from seeing the repeated pattern of clients arriving with a solution already in mind before the underlying problem has been properly interrogated. “Clients understandably come to agencies saying they need a new website, a new platform, better UX or a particular piece of technology,” Barbelli stated. “But ‘we need a new website’ isn’t really a problem, it’s a proposed solution. The question we’re much more interested in is, what’s happening in the business that makes you think you need one?

“One of the easiest mistakes to make in our industry is to become very good at solving the problem we were handed, rather than asking whether it’s the right problem to solve. If you start with the solution, everything that follows is designed to justify it. If you start with the problem, you give yourself permission to arrive somewhere else.”

Wonderful, launched in January 2023, will continue to deliver digital strategy, customer research, UX, design, technology, analytics and experimentation, but will no longer assume any one discipline is the answer from the outset.

Barbelli added, “Agencies have traditionally been organised around what they sell. If you’re a web agency, the answer has a habit of becoming a website. If you’re a technology consultancy, it becomes technology. If you’re a media agency, it becomes media. That’s understandable commercially, but it’s backwards from the client’s point of view. Businesses don’t have UX problems, CMS problems or website problems in isolation. They have growth problems, customer problems, operational problems and moments of change. Digital is one of the ways we respond to them. The most valuable question an agency can ask a client might not be ‘what do you want us to make?’ It might be ‘what are you actually trying to change?’ That sounds obvious, but in practice, it changes everything.

“Wonderful Possibilities is a very practical expression of what our new positioning is about. There are Australian social purpose organsiations doing incredibly important work that have digital challenges standing in the way of their impact. Giving one of them $25,000 of our strategy, research, UX, design and technology expertise gives us the opportunity to help solve a real problem, rather than simply build something for the sake of it. For us, that’s what the Wonderful Possibilities are all about, using what we’re good at to help good go further.”

Applications for Wonderful Possibilities are open now.