Inside Topham Guerin: the New Zealand duo behind global digital campaigns

In little over four years, the pair have gone from building websites for family friends’ businesses to working on some of the most high-profile election campaigns in the world while also having their work on ovarian cancer awareness on the biggest billboard in Times Square. In the last year, they’ve grown from a team of 11 to over 30 with offices in Auckland, London and Sydney. “The whole thing’s been quite crazy,” Topham says. “Four years ago it was just two guys and a couple of Macbooks back in Auckland.”

Topham and Geirin both grew up very online, building websites and teaching themselves the tools of the trade. Ben made posters for school events on pirated Adobe software. One of their first clients together was for a call centre. Then a kiwi sanctuary and a hairdresser. They see those beginnings, working as a small one-stop-shop rather than as minions at large agencies, as laying the foundation of what’s made them especially successful in digital environments where speed is more important than perfection. “When you’re used to doing it all yourself, you build up a culture where you just get shit done,” Guerin says. “Our team is used to making stuff happen. Whether it’s quickly editing a video or making a graphic, we’re excited to do the work we’re doing and can do it quickly and at a really high standard and come up with really bold, creative ideas.”

And yet Topham is warm, funny and charming. Everyone I’ve spoken to who has met him says they liked him immediately, including those who recoil at his client list

Guerin is sharp and analytical, moving at pace between discussing intricate matters of contemporary marketing, the regulation of social media

“In the 80s and 90s, you’d have a campaign of a really memorable TV ad or a poster – a couple of big set pieces of creative that would stand out. What we describe these days is instead of having a big bonfire in a campaign, you have lots of little fires, lots of little messages that all support broader narrative but have a range of different creative approaches, a range of different styles, and that’s what social does really well. If we have lots of content all saying the same thing, in lots of different ways that appeals to different people.”

Topham learned about the power of the meme firsthand when, working on the University of Auckland’s Law Review in 2014, he helped make the now-infamous Patty Gower “This is the fucking news” video. “That’s where I caught the bug on meme content,” Topham says of the video that still circulates and is still mistaken for an actual outtake from the nightly news.

Only a couple of months after its rumoured association with Simon Bridges-era National, Sean Topham returned to New Zealand to work on the government’s Covid response, working with various agencies and departments. “They really understood the importance of a really good communications campaign for responding to coronavirus,” says Topham. “They know that it would take in multiple layers of comms, of not just primary channels with the ‘Stay home, save lives’ message, but right across the board to reach audiences on social media.”

“It was a real privilege to be able to work with Jacinda Ardern on the New Zealand response,” Guerin continues. “It’s really hard to imagine a more important project in New Zealand at the time. Obviously, we’ve got a bit of experience in helping messages get understood on the internet and the opportunity to be able to put those skills to use on such a forum, that’s above politics.”