Emma Walker, Curly Media: why brands became the new commissioners

16 Aug, 2026
Emma Walker, Curly Media: why brands became the new commissioners

Emma Walker founded Curly Media in January 2022, after deciding she did not want to spend her career in a television industry that was contracting around her. Three and a half years on, the agency has made Spotify’s Wrapped campaign in the UK, Sky’s Danny Dyer lookalike contest, video podcasts for Netflix and work for Nike and BBC Studios.

She joins Justin Crosby to explain the commercial logic that took her straight to brands. Brand money was already paying for television through ad breaks, so the question was never whether brands would fund content, only who they would fund it through. What follows is a practical account of how that money actually moves: which departments hold which budgets, why social, PR, marketing and out of home teams need to be treated as one conversation rather than several, and why understanding a client’s internal politics matters as much as the creative work.

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/85nAhf1oAIY

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Transcripts for this episode will be available soon.

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