Published on: October 26, 2026
Julie Matthews, a creative industry veteran with nearly three decades of experience at agencies including Saatchi & Saatchi, Ogilvy and OMD, has launched DOSE, an independent creative studio serving brands and marketers across Australia.
The studio aims to provide strategic direction and creative expertise in a changing agency landscape, where consolidation is reshaping traditional networks and more senior creative professionals are moving towards independent models.
DOSE offers brand marketers creative strategy and ideas, while providing senior-level creative support to media agencies, creative agencies and production companies across metropolitan and regional Australia. Its services span brand strategy, positioning, messaging, campaign development and creative leadership across film, content, social media and design.
Throughout her career, Matthews has held senior positions at several international agencies, including Saatchi & Saatchi London, McCann Shanghai, Grey Melbourne, Ogilvy Singapore, Publicis Auckland and OMD.
During her time at McCann Shanghai, she led creative direction for L’Oréal Paris across Greater China and worked on Procter & Gamble’s Olay account in London. At Ogilvy Singapore, she oversaw campaigns for Unilever brands Pond’s and Dove, as well as Kimberly-Clark’s Huggies, contributing to global campaigns.
In Australia, Matthews led OMD’s creative offering for clients including Beiersdorf, Estée Lauder, Clinique, Brother, Bacardi-Martini, RACV and Tourism Victoria. During this period, the agency recorded 30% year-on-year growth in creative revenue.
DOSE has been established around the idea of matching each client and brief with the “right dose” of talent and expertise. Its flexible, modular operating model allows the studio to assemble the appropriate creative resources for each assignment while maintaining consistent senior leadership, strategic oversight and accountability.
Explaining the market conditions that influenced the launch, Matthews said, “The traditional, infrastructure-heavy, mid-tier full-service agency is hollowing out, and only two kinds of businesses will thrive: the mega-integrated networks that can do everything at scale, and the small, sharp independents that do one thing exceptionally well. Everything in the middle is exposed. That reading, more than any brand idea, is where DOSE began.
“Our focus is on combining senior creative leadership with the people and specialist expertise each brief needs.”
Outlining the studio’s approach to client briefs, Matthews added, “Our perspective is simple – every good brief has a better one hiding inside it; finding it is the job. Clients aren’t short of ideas or suppliers – they just need someone senior enough to identify the real problem. At DOSE, we uncover the challenge beneath the brief, develop the idea that solves it, and bring it to life wherever customers encounter the brand.
“Our aim is to be the studio that brands, in-house teams, media agencies and production companies turn to when the brief matters – to uncover the real problem before budget is spent.”
Matthews also highlighted the benefits of the studio’s flexible structure, noting, “This elastic, modular model means we can give each client the right measure of creative firepower for the brief, while the senior leadership, the thinking behind the idea, and the accountability for what gets made, stays constant.
“What we’re really offering is senior thinking, judgement and expertise. At DOSE, a marketer gets direct access to experienced strategic and creative people, with no hand-over and no translation loss between the problem and the solution.”
Looking ahead, Matthews said, “As we continue to grow our client stable and our offering, we want to be known for one thing: work that changes what people think and feel about a brand, and measured by whether the business number moved.”
Read more: Madhive Selects AdImpact to Bring Competitive Spend Data To Local Media
