40 Under 40 2024: Dalton Henshaw, Bullfrog

Dalton Henshaw

Founder and CEO
Bullfrog
Australia 

Dalton Henshaw certainly had nerves of steel to launch an independent agency just as Covid began to cause panic around the world in February 2020. That too, without any legacy advertising experience. The fact that Henshaw is in this tightly contested list just four years after the agency’s inception is testament to his dynamic, self-made mentality.

Bullfrog, a small creative shop birthed in Henshaw’s mind, was a symbol of resistance to the pandemic. When many clients were cautiously cutting back on spend in 2020, Bullfrog’s deliberate approach was to storm in with solutions for a changing world, as well as solutions that were unrestricted by legacy thinking. This strategy paid off with the agency now delivering upwards of AU$12.5 million (US$8.3 million) in annual billings, and a compounding annual growth rate of 49% since its launch.

Bullfrog’s staff count has increased to 36 and its client list includes names like ANZ, AIA Insurance, Kathmandu, Penfolds, Treasury Wine Estates, Linktree, Bose, and Crime Stoppers. The icing on the cake has been the series of awards the agency has already picked up so far including a Gold at Spikes Asia and an Effies. Talk about hitting the ground running.

When it comes to leadership, Bullfrog’s small size and indie culture mean that Henshaw is very much a part of the agency’s collaborative spirit. He encourages his team to feel comfortable in ‘not knowing everything’ given the pace of change in the industry, and to consistently challenge each other with a shared goal of success. To execute healthy dialogue, the team meets once a week for roundtable sessions. And to ensure that he holds himself accountable as an efficient leader, Henshaw conducts 360-degree reviews of his performance with the whole team.

One might overlook the importance of diverse hiring in an organisation with over 30 employees, but Henshaw is of the belief that the best teams are also the most diverse regardless of size. This is evident in Bullfrog’s healthy representation of minority groups including LGBTQ+ (15%), people of colour (20%), and those over 45 (10%). Just over 20% of agency staff work part-time including ECD Ellen Bullen, a showcase of flexible working models. This flexibility, according to Henshaw, is the reason why Bullfrog’s creative team has a 5:3 ratio of women to men—indubitably a rarity even in 2024.