Stacey Bird and Jack Croft: Behind Wonderhoods' Dynamic Duo

Some creative partnerships are forged through what sounds like fate, while others more unorthodox means. For Stacey Bird and Jack Croft, a chance university pairing led to something much more enduring – and some of the industry’s most recently loved work, from a foodie floating about space to Keira Knightly and Joe Wilkinson’s whirlwind love story for Waitrose last Christmas.

The pair have had their individual entries to advertising; Bird, fled the shop floor at Debenhams, while Croft sought adventure, as asked of his vicar father, and met at the Buckinghamshire University’s creative advertising course. The result: they began their careers at Channel 4's celebrated in-house agency, 4creative, before taking the leap to be part of the founding team at Wonderhood Studios. 

In the years since, they’ve helped shape the agency’s creative identity, rising through the creative department to ECDs in January 2025, and producing standout work for the likes of Branston and Comic Relief. 

Together the duo discuss their pathways into advertising, sharing why risk-taking plays a key role in their work, and what they think about modern day creativity. 

How did you get started in your careers? 

Stacey Bird: We both met at the creative advertising course at Bucks. But our journey to get there was quite different. I was actually a manager in Debenhams in my hometown, a friend came to see me and told me she had been doing this creative course, and she thought I would be good at it. I looked into it, and to cut a long story short I got into that uni and teamed up with Jack, and he is now married to that wonderful friend that saved me from folding t-shirts.

Jack Croft: Before meeting Stace at Bucks Uni I studied at Leeds Art College. It was the now retired tutor at Bucks, Julie, coming to show off loads of ads ex-students had made at Leeds Art College that made me realise you can get paid for being creative. Before that point I wanted to be a Photographer and spent a most of my college years in a dark room developing film and making prints. After we left Bucks we placemented about for a while, eventually getting our first job at 4creative, Channel 4’s inhouse agency.

What does creativity mean to you?

SB: Creativity is both an escape and a solution. Whether you’re coming up with ideas or getting that fizzy feeling over a creative concept a team has just presented, that’s when the job feels most like an escape — like, I can’t believe we get paid to think about a singing bread roll. But creativity is also always the solution. Whether it’s selling, solving problems, or changing people’s minds, those things can’t be done through strategic thinking alone.

JC: I think life would be pretty boring without it. It shakes things up and makes things interesting. And I count myself lucky that a big part of my job involves it.

What role did creative play in growing up?

SB: I didn’t grow up in a household that was ‘creative’ in a traditional sense. We weren’t off to art galleries at the weekend or listening to Jazz in the living room on a Sunday. It was more trips to B&Q and listening to Madness in the car. But my dad loved comedy. And he used to film sketch shows as Christmas presents which we were all involved in, even my great grandad was dressed as Mick Hucknall in one of them. I loved them and still do, I think it was that kind of creativity that played a role in my childhood, to make something with a lot of effort for no other reason than to make your family laugh.

JC: Well, I’m a vicar's kid, and my dad isn’t the sort of vicar that had everyone snoring whilst he droned on from the pulpit. I remember one Christmas day sermon where he recreated the Dove From Above from Vic and Bob’s Shooting Stars, where he made everyone coo down this helium filled Father Christmas as it was lowered down on a fishing line from high up in the church (you’ll have to look up the reference if you’re a young’un). Beyond the Sunday mornings, I just loved any opportunity to noodle away at something that didn’t have all the ‘rules’ of academic subjects, like drawing, painting, music etc. I also owe a lot to my exposure to really good comedy in the 90’s. I was brought up on a healthy diet of The Simpsons, The Fast Show and Father Ted.

Were there any particularly inspirational people, or a particular moment that helped shape your path or way of thinking?

SB: There have been loads of brilliant people who have shaped how Jack and I think, work, and direct, from our teachers at uni to Aidan, Wonderhood Studios’s wonderful CCO. The team at 4creative made a huge impression on us early in our careers. They showed us how making creative work should feel. They always pushed us to make things in the most unexpected way possible. We always had time to explore, and they approached every project with a real “anything is possible” attitude.

JC: My dad always used to say to me ‘Go and have an adventure’. Having two children whilst studying at uni wasn’t quite the adventure I think he intended me to have, but an adventure, nonetheless. The sentiment of what he said is really important I think, especially when applied to the work we do in advertising. You want each campaign you work on to be a bit of an adventure. Going off into the unknown, doing something that’s a bit different to the work that’s gone before.

How did you form and develop your creative partnership?

SB: We met at uni, and paired up for a random project, our second year is a bit like speed dating where you do different projects with different partners. We’re very different as people but we have a real connection over taste and what makes us laugh. Honestly, we’ve kind of been inseparable since then. We know what the other one is thinking across a meeting room and that we will be completely honest with each other even if it’s hard to hear.

How do you see working within the culture of Wonderhood Studios helped you develop creatively? 

SB: Wonderhood has definitely pushed us and helped develop us into who we are today. It started as a small team of six on our first day and we really needed each other to learn off, push and actually do the work. That all-in mentally is still here with everyone caring deeply about the work and each other.

JC: What’s great about going somewhere new is that you’re able to learn from a whole new bunch of talented people. We used to always want to just make funny work (and, to be honest, we do still want to do that a lot of the time!) but it was Aidan who encouraged us to write in a variety of tones. The work we made in the earlier years of Wonderhood (Hit of Home for Branston Pickle, ‘Wise Words’ for Comic Relief) helped us flex and grow as creatives, embracing other emotions in our work. I think having that breadth of work to our name has helped us as we’ve moved on to Creatively direct and eventually to run the creative department.

How big a shift was the move from 4Creative?

SB: Honestly massive, going from having the marketing team sitting just upstairs to having to sell to complete strangers that have come to you for an idea was a really different experience. That’s not to say 4creative was easy, because it had totally different challenges, but joining a start-up was like a promotion on steroids.

JC: Going from the best in-house creative department in the industry, within a 1000+ person company to a small room with just six people was quite a shock. That jump meant we had to learn and grow very quickly. I remember the first ad we made was for The Migration Museum and we designed and art worked it ourselves. Thankfully things have changed a bit since then!

What work are you most proud of? 

SB: I think we’d both agree that it’s probably our work with Waitrose. It’s the big, popularist work you dream of doing when you’re at uni.

JC: Yeah, it would have to be the work we’ve been doing with Waitrose over the last year or so. It’s been brilliant to re-position them as ‘The home of food lovers’ and to do that through such a breadth of work, from ‘The Perfect Gift’ Christmas work to ‘The Gastrononaut’ food/space epic. A piece of work I look back on from our earlier years and still love every frame of is the work we made for Channel 4’s first season of ‘The Great British Bake Off’.

How do you go about pitching in eye catching ideas that are distinctive for the brand but perhaps also a little bit risky too? Why is that perhaps more important than ever? 

SB: It’s more important than ever to be bold and take risks you’re not just up against other ads, you’re up against a whole world of culture on demand. And I think this is true especially if you have smaller budgets and media spend than your competitors, you just can’t afford to be mediocre.

JC: I think there’s often a misconception that bold creatively exciting, ground breaking ideas aren’t necessarily at the service of solving a business problem and bringing in more customers. There’s sometimes a bit of suspicion around these sorts of ideas. Some clients might be asking, What’s the catch? Are these creative types just wanting to make wild stuff for the sheer thrill of it? Or are they just after shiny awards? In the face of that we have to have ultimate confidence in the power of captivating creativity to solve real brand problems.

What do you see as being the craft of using AI as a creative?

JC: It’s completely levelled up the way our creatives can visualise their work. And man, they’re so much better than me and Stace at it. It helps hugely with pressured timelines, but I think it must be used carefully. If you reach right for GPT as soon as a kernel of an idea is finding its way out of your brain, the idea starts wearing an ai jacket. You’ve got to clothe your ideas a bit before you get your big ai bot to come along and bring it to life.

If advertising was suddenly banned, what would you do?

SB: I’d love to write a comedy or drama for long-form, whether that’s a film or a series. I don’t know if I’d be any good at it, but I think there’s something timeless about entertaining people and telling stories.

JC: Who knows, maybe I’d go off and be a vicar. That’s kind of like advertising, right?