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New agency Foundry Collective built to support Kiwi SMEs
Foundry Collective co-founders from left: Wade Kirkland and Emily Ostrowska, and head of growth Fiona Kerr.
A new Auckland-based agency group Foundry Collective is launching this month to help Kiwi businesses grow in a more sustainable way.
The new business will be led by co-founders Emily Ostrowska and Wade Kirkland, alongside head of growth Fiona Kerr.
Ostrowska brings international experience across New Zealand, the UK and the US in digital strategy and integrated marketing. Kirkland adds commercial and operational leadership across media and business growth, while Kerr brings senior marketing leadership experience, having held strategic growth roles and worked across brands including VAPO, alt., Coca-Cola, Lion and Nestlé.
Redefining the agency model
Ostrowska and Kirkland say Foundry Collective is designed to redefine the modern agency model, by combining intelligent systems, strategic oversight and AI-enabled optimisation.
Foundry Collective brings together strategic growth consultancy Folk&Tale and performance-led digital agency Explosive Social.
“Built to support New Zealand’s SME sector, the Foundry Collective model responds to growing pressure on businesses to deliver results – balancing long-term brand building with the immediacy of performance media, so both work together in a streamlined system, to drive sustainable compounding growth rather than disparate activity,” says Ostrowska.
“AI plays a central role in how that system operates, it’s transforming how marketing gets done – streamlining execution, automating repetitive tasks and unlocking deeper data intelligence. But the real value still lies in how that’s applied.”
Moving into a new era
Ostrowska, who is also the founder of Folk&Tale, says marketing is moving into a new era.
“Execution is becoming faster, cheaper and more accessible through AI – but the real value is no longer in doing more. It’s in designing how everything works together. That’s the shift we’re here to lead.
“We connect brand strategy, performance and every customer touchpoint in one coherent system – so brands can move beyond fragmented activity and drive growth that actually compounds.”
A new way of structuring marketing
Through Explosive Social, growing businesses access high-performance paid media, social and customer acquisition.
As those businesses grow, Folk&Tale layers in – embedding senior strategic leadership through a fractional CMO model. Then comes fuller brand and marketing capability: brand strategy, design, website development, campaign production and ATL activity.
Ostrowska adds: “Many businesses have strong individual components – brand, media, content – but they’re not connected.
“Across my time working in agencies, I’ve seen the same pattern repeat – activity everywhere, but little integration behind it. That’s where growth starts to plateau. The real opportunity now is in connecting those pieces in a way that builds momentum. That’s where we’re seeing the biggest impact.”
Built for the new generation
“We’re seeing a wave of ambitious businesses launching faster than ever,” says Ostrowska.
“As they grow, the challenge becomes less about execution, and more about how everything fits together – from initial customer acquisition through to long term brand growth.
“This is about building an agency that aligns with how modern marketing actually works – more connected, more strategic, and designed to support growth over the long term.”
Foundry Collective launches with a team of 20 across both agencies, spanning employed talent and fractional CMOs.
