Sachini Imbuldeniya

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Oddity

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There’s a big reason why I called our agency ‘House of Oddities'. It’s not because it’s one of the 0.01% of agencies owned and run by a woman of colour – possibly the most depressing statistic in the creative industry aside from ‘87% of advertising is ignored’.

I wanted to build a home for people who didn’t feel like they ‘fit in’ with the traditional creative industry mould. Maybe because until now I had never worked a single day in advertising.

I originally worked in editorial – like the majority of the HOO team – which has been pretty useful. Not knowing the ‘traditional’ ways of doing advertising means we’re free to break the rules. Why does it take 9 months and 100 people to make a 60 second TV ad? No idea. It shouldn’t. So we don’t.

In the newsroom you learn to work fast, to change as quickly as the news does. To react to the news cycle, to trends. We’ve learned how to fight hard to get attention from audiences. What they want to hear, and how to tell them the stuff they really don’t want to hear.

Editorial is read by millions, while advertising is ignored by billions – so we know how to make a big difference. And that’s what House of Oddities is. A place where difference makes a difference.

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‘‘We’ve had to learn how to fight hard to get attention... it makes a big difference’’.