The Agency That Lost 70 Percent - and Came Back Bigger

In March 2020, the floor disappeared. Hunt & Gather, a New York communications firm built around proximity, conversation, and finely arranged rooms, lost 70 percent of its revenue in two weeks. There is a dark joke in that timing. The agency had spent six years helping companies command attention. Then the world produced the only story anyone could discuss, and it required everyone to stay out of the room.

A weaker account of what followed would call it resilience and move on. The useful detail is stranger. In 2021, Hunt & Gather reported its best year ever, 50 percent higher than any previous one. It expanded experiential work, talent services, and partnerships at precisely the moment the phrase “in real life” began to sound luxurious. What failed first was the old calendar: events, launches, and the predictable machinery around them. What changed the agency's mind was the appetite underneath that calendar. People had not stopped wanting connection. They had become painfully aware of its value.

The product is a story with furniture

Hunt & Gather calls itself a strategic and creative communications consultancy. That accurate description is also unusually modest. The official menu runs through corporate and consumer PR, events, executive and founder communications, brand partnerships, narrative development, influencer relations, and marketing strategy. The more revealing way to describe the business is this: it makes an argument tangible.

Blank Street wanted greater relevance with Gen Z. The agency did not produce a white paper about youth affinity. It partnered with The Social Group and built tattoo pop-ups where customers could get free real or temporary ink with an iced drink. The activation drew 5,500 visitors over four days, generated more than 50 pieces of earned coverage, and reached 7.9 million people on social platforms. Brand loyalty, ordinarily a phrase trapped in a slide deck, became something a customer could put on an arm.

This is not novelty for novelty's sake. The stunt had a tidy strategic sentence inside it: make a familiar Gen Z ritual more consequential and therefore more shareable. The company starts with a business problem, identifies a cultural behavior, and then gives that behavior a physical form. The press arrives later, as an amplifier.

“We create media moments, partnerships, content and experiences, and we handle every detail.”Hunt & Gather, describing its work

The odd object travels furthest

Consider the Brussels sprout. It is small, divisive, and not an obvious path to corporate reputation. For an Amazon Christmas food campaign, Hunt & Gather noticed several conversations already moving through British culture: vegan eating, local suppliers, seasonal food, and the national enthusiasm for condiments. With Sauce Shop, it created Brussels Sprout Ketchup and sold it exclusively on Amazon UK. Within two hours it became the site's best-selling ketchup.

The trick was not simply being weird. Weird is plentiful. The bottle joined four existing discussions in one photogenic object, while supporting Amazon's intended message about premium food and small businesses. A good communications idea reduces the distance between strategy and gossip. Someone can repeat “sprout ketchup” at lunch without consulting the campaign brief.

The same logic can fill a room. For Vox Media at CES, where the default choices are party and dinner, the agency flew 30 executives by helicopter to a Grand Canyon luncheon. For Netflix, it arranged first looks and press tours around Stranger Things stores in New York and Los Angeles. The resulting coverage exceeded 490 positive pieces. These are expensive-looking ideas, though campaign budgets and agency fees are private. Hunt & Gather does not post a rate card because it sells custom counsel and execution, not a box with a fixed price.

The spectacle has a serious twin

It would be easy to mistake the agency for a factory of playful activations. Its other half works quietly on people and perception. It helped frame Cisco executive Amy Chang's narrative beyond trade media. It built introductions for IBM's Martin Jetter among leaders in fashion, design, media, travel, and entertainment. For VICE chief Nancy Dubuc, it developed messaging, stage appearances, media interviews, and internal communications during a period of cultural repair. For Weight Watchers, it connected executive visibility, partnerships, ambassadors, and product announcements to reposition the company amid the rise of GLP-1 drugs.

Jolie Hunt's biography explains the range. Before founding the firm in 2014, she held senior communications roles at the Financial Times, IBM, Thomson Reuters, and AOL. Those are four different classrooms: news judgment, enterprise credibility, financial information, and internet-era reinvention. The agency she built moves between them. Its customers include founders with no established story and blue-chip brands burdened by an old one.

The company now lists offices in New York, London, and Abu Dhabi. Its sectors include technology, retail, media and entertainment, travel, wellness, food and drink, and blue-chip companies. That footprint places it between two familiar alternatives: the specialist boutique that knows one narrow category, and the giant network that can staff every channel but may distribute an idea across too many departments. Hunt & Gather's pitch is the middle: broad experience, senior attention, and enough compactness to move.

What is actually copyable

Most readers cannot rent a helicopter to the Grand Canyon, and most should not invent a condiment. The transferable part is a sequence of decisions. It is much less glamorous than the final photograph.

This approach requires a real cultural fit and enough operational control to execute the promise. A tattoo pop-up without brand permission is costume. An executive platform without genuine expertise is exposure without substance. A live event without a clear audience is simply catering. Hunt & Gather's strongest cases work because the spectacle carries the strategy rather than obscuring it.

The culture it advertises is similarly unfussy: true partnership, honesty, curiosity, and grace. It says collaboration and excellence rank above ego and ambition, and that it is not a win-at-all-costs environment. Agency values are easy to typeset and hard to audit. Yet “curiosity” is visible in the portfolio. Someone had to ask whether a condiment could explain Amazon, whether a helicopter could rescue a CES lunch, and whether a coffee brand's loyalty program might be permanent.

The lesson of the 70 percent collapse is not that every business can rebound by adding experiences. It is that Hunt & Gather found the durable need beneath a broken format. The rooms vanished. The desire to be in one did not. So the agency returned with better rooms, stranger objects, and sharper reasons for people to talk once they went home.