Dynamic Duos: The Fuller siblings
This week in Dynamic Duos, we hear from Fuller’s Sydney MD, Kate Fuller, and national MD, Will Fuller.
In Dynamic Duos, Mumbrella each week asks two colleagues with a professional and personal affiliation to share with readers the importance of workplace relationships in an increasingly hybridised world of work.
Kate Fuller:
I met Will in 1983, two days after Christmas, on a hot summer’s evening in Kadina, country-South Australia. I was just a few hours old, and he was besotted. Or so I tell myself.
We grew up in the Barossa, where our folks established Peter Fuller and Associates (now Fuller) back in 1994, as a predominately ag and viticulture communications company. One of their first projects was building “brand Barossa” with some of the Valley’s most legendary winemakers. This gave both Will and I a pretty solid early understanding of the highs, lows and ultimate responsibility of running an independent agency.
Will left home at 18 to go to Adelaide Uni – where his hair grew longer, and his mates got hotter. I joined him a few years later but eventually moved to California to write for magazines and study jazz, while Will returned to the family business after building a career in wine marketing in London.
After years apart — Will building the Fuller brand in Adelaide, and me writing about research for Oxford University while doing one-woman cabaret shows in Edinburgh — I returned home and audaciously asked him for a job.
Fuller had grown from a rural PR firm into a full-service brand and creative agency, with over 30 employees and a national client list — and I not only wanted a piece of the pie, I could see a huge opportunity in bringing my creative and longform writing experience to the table.
And so Will and I started working together. It must have been our genetic ability to tell a good story, to find each other endlessly funny in creative workshops, or our joint love of a well-crafted jingle, but somehow we made a great team. Will focusing on strategy, and me crafting the story.
Our work with Yalumba Family Vineyards really consolidated our creative partnership. Not only did we love the brand and truly believe in the stories we were telling, we were able to craft content that truly spoke to the soul of the “winery on the hill”.
The great thing about Will is his ability to fall in love with the brands he works for and see the big picture potential for every single brief that comes his way. He listens and asks really poignant questions and can get to the nub of a brief in seconds — I’m not sure if it’s his natural charisma or just his belief in the idea but he is so great at coming up with a creative direction and leading everyone around him to achieve it, from our people to our clients.
Eventually, the bright lights of Sydney drew me away from Will and the Adelaide office, but my connection to Fuller couldn’t be stronger. As managing director, Sydney, I’m now working on building our east coast presence, and after just four years we’re already working with a number of major brands including AV Jennings, Vero, and Travelodge Hotels.
While Will and I mainly work “on” the business together now, a passion project will occasionally come up that we just have to work on together. Like the recent sonic brand we produced for Adelaide University in partnership with Sonar Music — combining our skills of strategy and storytelling, together with our love of music, into one project. It was magic!
Outside of the work, once a month we get together to do what we do best — entertain! We host a monthly long lunch for clients and friends of Fuller, which we’ve affectionately termed “Full Table”. It’s an opportunity for like-minded businesspeople to share knowledge and make connections — there’s always lots of laughs, good conversation and (of course) excellent food and wine!
Will Fuller:
I met Katie a few months before I turned three, life was good as the first-born child, then she arrived – with a mop of straight black hair, red-faced, loud, and already commanding the room.
Growing up we bonded over 90s pop culture, a shared love of music, and working out the best way to sneak wine from Dad’s cellar.
That early interest in wine took me all the way to London, where I worked as a wine marketer, before returning to Adelaide to build the family business.
A decade or so later, Katie waltzed back into my life (after years of travelling the world to pursue her writing and singing career) and asked for a job. So, I threw her in the deep-end and was pleasantly surprised when she didn’t drown.
In fact, to her credit, Katie carved out a space for herself at Fuller as our go-to storyteller — bringing her international technical writing skills and creative experience into our agency. She wrote blogs before most of our clients knew what a blog was, created social content just as digital marketing was taking off, and brought our brand strategies and creative ideas to life through beautifully crafted narratives.
And so our creative partnership took shape: me bringing the big ideas and vision, and Katie crafting the words and creating the content to make it happen.
Katie’s superpower is her background as a professional performer, she spent 10 years living across LA and the UK, performing on some of the world’s biggest stages at Edinburgh Fringe, Montreux Jazz Festival and Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club — that kind of experience is rare in an agency and to me its enabled her to understand what audiences want, and be truly brave with her creative ideas and execution. It’s also given her a work ethic and tenacity that’s impossible to teach, if she wants something she works her arse off to get it. In agency this means never giving up on the big idea, defending it and selling it with conviction.
She’s also had the most amazing technical writing experience working as a freelance journalist and writing about medical research for Oxford University, so she has a pretty powerful offer as a writer and creator.
After 31 years in business — my wife Liv, Katie and I are now managing Fuller together, from day to day operations and business development, to strategy, while still overseeing all brand and creative work.
Together we’re growing our national presence as an agency, which is really exciting and bloody hard work — but Katie and I still find time to have a laugh, hang out with each other’s kids, and drink Dad’s wine together whenever we can.
Kate on Will:
Most memorable moment with Will: Whenever he chooses our people over a project — like the time he politely declined a very large piece of work because the (male) client refused to engage with, look at, or listen to any of the women in the room.
Best word to describe him: Charismatic.
Most annoying habit or endearing behaviour he has: Too many annoying traits to list! Most endearing? He gives a shit — he’s got a huge heart, a strong sense of justice and is an amazing friend. He cares furiously about his people and his work.
Will on Kate:
Most memorable moment with Kate: The time she wrote a jingle about toilet flushing for SA Water and it ended up being played on national radio as a PR stunt. It was even touted a “banga” by the guys at Triple J!
Best word to describe her: Tenacious.
Most annoying habit or endearing behaviour she has: Her most annoying and endearing trait — in equal measure — is how emotional she is. She cries all the time, whether she’s furiously angry, sad, or ecstatically happy.
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