Julie Oxberry and Michelle Du-Prât co-founded Household in Shoreditch more than two decades ago, back when brand experience design wasn’t a category anyone was hiring for. They set up inside Mother’s building, absorbed a certain amount of that agency’s fierce independence and have since built experiences for Amazon, Warner Bros. Discovery’s Harry Potter flagship in New York, Christian Louboutin and Target — some of those client relationships now running 20 years deep.
“When we started, we wanted to create a place where people wanted to be, just like the ones that we create for brands today,” says Oxberry, Household’s group CEO. “It’s a really human approach.”
Twenty-three people across London and New York. B Corp certified. Still independent, and still using the word “fans” where the rest of the industry says “customers.”
The agency that started inside another agency
Household began life in the building of Mother, the London ad agency, and the relationship never ended — Household still shares space with them in New York and Los Angeles.
“Their sort of fierce independence, the way that they behave with other agencies, it taught us a way that we can be ourselves,” says Du-Prât, Household’s chief strategy officer.
What they built instead of a holding company was a network of their own, assembled by hand and kept deliberately loose. Clients get introduced to each other. Nobody signs anything.
What Household is known for: turning customers into fans
Household calls itself a world leader in brand experience design, which sounds like the kind of claim agencies make until you notice they’ve been making it since before the category had a name.
The distinctive IP is the shift from customers to fans. Insight drives the creative, strategy holds it together, and the output is a physical, tactile thing a person walks into rather than scrolls past.
“At the time that we started, nobody was doing this,” Oxberry says. “But it is still our approach today.”
Three things Household does differently
First, fandom as a discipline rather than a mood. Household built a proprietary tool — Fanalytics — to get under the skin of a brand’s customers and work out what would turn them into something more committed. “When fans love brands, they’re going to spend 25% more,” Du-Prât says. “And those are the very attractive numbers that go along with thinking about fandom.”
Second, the fan-first model, which treats a brand as an ecosystem showing up across every dimension rather than a logo with a tone of voice attached.
Third, the combination few agencies manage at once: innovation, creativity and commerciality, braided together. “They’re getting three quite different elements combined to create something new,” Du-Prât says.
“There is nothing sitting on our heads”
Independence, for Household, is mostly about who gets to say no. As a B Corp, the founders pick clients whose values line up with theirs, which is a luxury a networked shop rarely gets.
“A big networked agency rarely gets to pick like that,” Oxberry says. “We can move fast, and that freedom matters more than you might think.”
She puts the rest of it more plainly. “We probably don’t know how lucky we are. There is nothing sitting on our heads, apart from the economy.”
Why brands should work with Household
The pitch is structural. Small teams, invested in the client’s business, moving at the client’s pace rather than a network’s billing cycle.
The client roster runs from global entertainment giants to Forbes 500 retailers to an iconic fragrance house, and what they’ve told Household they value is less about the work than the working: service level, chemistry, appetite for innovation.
“What they all want, and what they get from Household, is a team that will tell them the truth, that’s enjoyable to work with,” Oxberry says. “For us, our success is their success.”
Small teams, real apprenticeships
Twenty-three people covering graphic design, digital design, strategy, client servicing and interior architecture, working close enough together that skills leak sideways.
“In a larger networked agency, junior talent can go years without direct access to the people who are shaping strategy,” Oxberry says. “But here, people work closely enough to leadership so that learning happens by osmosis.”
The rest is the unglamorous scaffolding that turns out to matter: line management, weekly stand-ups, breakfast shares, monthly company meetings, guest speakers, team lunches. Household mentors, judges competitions and runs portfolio reviews — which is how it meets the good ones early. People leave. A lot of them come back.
Not weirdos, misfits or underdogs. Fanatics.
Offered the standard three boxes, Du-Prât declined all of them, which is itself a fairly misfit thing to do.
“We call ourselves fanatics,” she says. “We’re fanatical about people, brands, experiences. We are fanatical about our clients. We love their businesses, and I think that’s why brands come to us. They see that obsession. They can feel it. It sparks the chemistry.”
Her reasoning is that clients don’t hire Household because it’s odd or scrappy. They hire it because they want something that challenges the norm and pushes a boundary — and then uses the customer obsession to prove the boundary was in the wrong place.
Dear Rhode and Four Seasons: call us
Oxberry’s pick is Rhode. The skincare brand has only recently stepped into live activation, and Household would like to help its community meet it in person — part of a broader interest in where beauty, wellness and the technology around both are heading.
Du-Prât went to hospitality, and specifically to Four Seasons, a hotel brand now stretching into residences, aviation, yachts, wellness, retail and experiential travel.
“The brands that have the vision to think about the potential of their brand and how it can meet audiences in different places — that’s very exciting,” she says. There is, she notes, a pint in it for anyone who can make the introduction.
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