Everyone should be talking about proximity in production. But this isn’t an article about in-person vs. virtual meetings, or WFH vs. back-to-office. Proximity, in this context, is about the physical location of your creative partner. Because if your business is in regional Australia, your work will be better for it if you work with local providers. 

Let’s talk you through what we mean. 

Authenticity can’t be flown in

When’s the last time you engaged with local work? Truly local work. Something that was created in, for, and by your community. 

You’ll know it when you see it. 

People living in regional locations can tell when something isn’t right because there’s a sense it’s created with a magnifying glass instead of a mirror. 

• Creating with a magnifying glass is when someone from the outside is probing for something, looking under a lens for a nugget of truth. They need the magnifying glass because it’s tricky for them to find. 
• Creating with a mirror is holding up the entire landscape, community, and context. It’s a reflection of the truth, the place, the people. It’s natural. It’s not searching for something that isn’t already evident.

When you work with an agency that isn’t ingrained in the land you’re representing, you’re much more likely to get the magnifying glass approach. After all, how can someone visiting temporarily provide anything else? 

Even if the work is technically outstanding, you can’t fake what’s real for an entire population. They will know. 

Trust is a currency 

Trust means something else when you’re working with a local team, and that can’t be overlooked. In regional Australia, trust is cumulative. It’s built over years of showing up properly, knowing who people are, understanding what matters to them, and being accountable long after the project has shipped. It’s not something that can be added as a line item or bolted on to a production schedule. 

Trust changes the way work gets made. Communities open up differently when they know the people involved aren’t just passing through. Conversations are more honest. Access is easier. People are more willing to participate, collaborate, and contribute because there’s confidence in how they’ll be represented and where the work is coming from.

And there’s a different level of responsibility when it comes to trust on a local level. When you live in the same communities you’re working in, you don’t get the luxury of detachment. The work has to hold up after delivery because you’ll still be there once the campaign wraps. That accountability sharpens creative decisions in ways no brand guideline or strategy deck can replicate.

The key aspects of trust in local production are:  

• Trust between the team and the community: If your team knows the community, there will be so many more opportunities open to them. Tight communities are much more receptive to people who know them and can speak their figurative language.
• Trust in representation: Regional and remote locations in Australia are home to communities from diverse walks of life, whether that’s heritage, economic, or social contexts – there’s a lot that can go wrong when people aren’t represented by people who understand them, their reality, and their sensitivities.
• Culture is the creative: Culture isn’t something that can be read in a brief as you fly into a destination. It’s something that’s baked in. You need to live in a space, engage with the community every day, and then it becomes like breathing. City agencies do a great job at looking at the big picture, but it’s the microdetails and the art of understanding culture that underpins exceptional work for regional businesses. 
•  Trust in reputation: Let’s put this one bluntly. If you’re going to the same pubs as your business partners, you'd better hope you’re not doing wrong by them! Word of mouth spreads faster in regional Australia than in the cities. When your partner needs the trust of your community to survive, you can bank on the service you’re getting.  

Production agencies vs creative partners 

A production agency is there to help you create a body of work. After it’s done, they’ll move on to the next project, whether that’s with you or the next client. A creative partner is someone invested in your business's growth. And when your growth and theirs are connected in the same location, community, and situation, that bond is going to be so much deeper. 

The way we like to think about working with our local partners at Heretics is as co-authors. It’s not a relationship where we look at a brief and turn it around for you (although we can if that’s what you want). Instead, we prefer to build with you, turning your vision into something we’re all proud of and can show our shared community what we’ve created together. 

What it means to be a co-author with your creative partner: 

• The brief and vision are shared, with the work being something we can all be proud of 
• The work reflects the people, place, and community behind it
• Local knowledge shapes the creative from the beginning, not after the fact
• Decisions are made with cultural context, not just production efficiency, in mind
• Trust creates better access, stronger collaboration, and more honest work
• The process is collaborative, with the agency, client, and community all influencing the outcome
• Everyone involved has a stake in how the work is received locally
• The result feels lived-in and recognisable, rather than observed from the outside

At Heretics, we’re so proud to be creative partners and co-authors with our incredible clients. If you want to work with a team that works locally in the Northern Territory, South Australia, and Victoria, we’d love to chat.