Mother London 2025: Nurturing, Growing, Winning

Mother's 2025 has seen the famously independent agency unleash its legacy of audacious creativity to accelerate global growth and add to its roster of high-profile clients.

Amid aggressive upwards motion, this year the time came for a global leadership restructure - uniting its shops to give birth to a distinctive global creative powerhouse with all the hallmarks of its rebellious London ancestry. Enter Mother Family - which the agency has dubbed "a global kitchen table".

This brings together Mother London, Mother Design, Media by Mother, The Or, The Romans and more.

Its leadership team, consisting of Felix Richter (global CCO), Terri Miller (global chief client officer), Katie Mackay-Sinclair (global chief brand officer) and Chris Gallery (global chief strategy officer), is transforming the business into a one-stop creative shop combining independence with full-service depth.

At the end of the year it also promoted Tomas Coleman and Derek Man Lui to executive creative directors, reporting to Richter, and working alongside the agency’s ECD team including Hollie Walker, Nick Hallbery, Tom Bender and Kirsty Minns.

And in a fragmented media landscape it has proven itself to be an attractive proposition, clenching an array of new wins from Nationwide to Coach, Bombay Sapphire, Coinbase and Bang & Olufsen.

As it hits its 30th birthday in 2026, Mother certainly is maturing and strengthening at a faster pace than ever.

We asked Katie Mackay-Sinclair all about the group's year.

Katie Mackay-Sinclair, global chief brand officer, on Mother's 2025

What three words would you use to describe 2025?

Our best yet.

Talk us through some of your agency’s highlights this year?

We doubled down on making ‘the best work we possibly can’ for new and existing clients alike. From tackling some of the biggest technology questions out there, to reinvigorating much-loved UK brands - the breadth and depth has kept us on our toes! It’s been challenging at times, exhilarating throughout, and very rewarding.

Claude's category-defining ‘Keep Thinking' platform rallied problem solvers to face era-defining questions, and reaffirmed the power of human creativity in an increasingly AI-enabled world. We’ve partnered with M&S in their journey to becoming the UK’s most loved and trusted brand, ranking No1 for style perceptions and delivering a 10 year clothing market share high. Doubling down on BELIEVE sent KFC's UK sales +9 per cent YOY. An entertainment platform for Meta generated 290m+ organic views and a sold-out Meta Quest 3S Xbox. Uber and Mother went global, with an expanded partnership in the US. Coinbase gave crypto the musical it didn’t know it needed. And we started working with Nationwide, building the next chapter of work and thinking under ‘A Good Way to Bank’. They now have more current account switchers than any other brand.

We hired some of the best people out there. And we welcomed new clients including Nationwide, Anthropic, EA Games, Bombay Sapphire and Coinbase. Over two-thirds of our new business wins this year were secured without a traditional pitch process.

What one thing are you proudest of this year?

How every single person in the Biscuit Building showed up for the work, and for each other. In lots of ways this was a year of new for us - significant growth, our biggest global footprint ever, expanded experimentation with AI. There’s been lots to learn and lots to make a success of. Everyone has rolled up their sleeves, got stuck in, supported one another, and made it just that. The Sunday Times recognised us as a ‘Best Place to Work’ for the second year in a row. That was pretty great too.

And what’s been your biggest challenge?

Scaling in the right way, which fundamentally is about making sure we’ve got the right talent, teams and structures in place to maintain the quality of the work as we grow. It takes a lot of time. A lot of planning. And it means saying no quite a lot too.

What are you most looking forward to in 2026?

At the end of 2026, we’ll celebrate our 30th birthday. It’s a significant milestone for any agency, especially an indie, and an opportunity to celebrate what three decades of independence enables. That’s not just something we save for big birthdays though. I’m looking forward to another year of us championing what independence can mean - for our clients and their businesses, and for our people and their growth. We need it more than ever.

Creative Salon on Mother's 2025

The promotion of Felix Richter to global CCO coincided with yet another year of creative excellence for Mother.

The agency won eight Effies and was named Most Creative Agency Of The Year by Creative Review and took home an array of awards at The One Show, including a Gold pencil for Uber Eats.

On the creative front, Mother showed how it was well and truly tapped into the zeitgeist. Nowhere was this more obvious than for KFC where Mother's continuation of the "BELIEVE" platform led to a bizarre but intriguing spoty featuring a giant egg and an immersion in a giant lake of gravy.

Having picked up the Nationwide account from NCA last year, Mother has continued to help bolster the building society's "A.N.Y Bank" platform starring Dominic West.

In September it highlighted the problem of scams as the infamous banker received a scam call from someone purporting to be his daughter.

And after winning the account for US bag firm Coach last year, Mother created a campaign entitled 'On Your Own Time' for the brand.

For Uber, the agency produced 'Lost And Found', which leveraged celebrity and played on nostalgia. A further out-of-home campaign called 'You're Almost There' built on Gatwick Airport's status as a hub and humorously highlighted how Uber can get people to their personal final destinations quicker.

New business wins include Mother's appointment by Bombay Sapphire, Coinbase and EA Games.

For Coinbase, Mother created a wonderfully dark-humoured musical-inspired campaign.

For IKEA, Mother celebrated the launch of a Brighton store with a gloriously messy nod to the city's most famed yet pesky bird, the seagull.

It was also behind the Oxford Street pop up 'Hus Of Frakta', which teased the launch of IKEA's new store on the thoroughfare, with a nod to the status of the iconic IKEA blue bag, turning it into a fashion item.

And it continues to work across M&S's high profile fashion campaigns including spring, back to school and more.

Elsewhere, Media by Mother expanded into London in a move that has brought creative and media closer together. It is led by Tara Grimes.

Mother Design's work for the brand Rollr also won a Best Of Show award at the DIELINE Awards.

Mother's sister agency The Or was also busy in 2025. It snagged an exciting new business win with the luxury audio firm Bang & Olufsen and created a high-profile campaign for the brand's centenary.

For e-bike firm Lime, the agency also showed its playful side with a clever out-of-home takeover to coincide with the Tube strikes.

Creative Salon says... There's plenty to be joyful for in the Biscuit Building as Mother reaches its 30th birthday year. With a bold leadership team at the helm, the agency continues to attract the best talent and clients. That it does so is testament to its creative integrity. But what makes Mother such a stand-out shop is the fact that one never quite knows what to expect. And it is precisely this boldness that defines why the agency continues to cut through the noise.