Creatives with agency

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“We’d been dreaming of working together since the first couple of years at Leo,” says Lea Salibi, one-fifth of Read the Room. “We had great chemistry, worked on really successful campaigns, and became best friends,” she adds, smiling now and then at fellow founder Natasha Maasri. “So we were like, ‘let’s make this happen before it’s too late’.”

It’s mid-morning in May, and the three of us are seated outside at Nayla in Achrafieh. It’s the first time Salibi and Maasri have worked together in person since teaming up with Rana El Khoury, Caroline Farra, and Roula Asmar to form Read the Room in January 2024. Both look happy, energised, and free of the toxicity that permeates much of the advertising industry.

As inaugural meetings go, it’s relatively early in the founders’ journey. This is their first interview; Read the Room’s website is still under construction (it has since been launched); and the team is still assembling a roster of global talent. That roster will allow them to draw on a diverse group of creatives from across the world, tailored to each project’s needs. 

Although it’s still early days, their intention is clear. Read the Room is not an agency per se, but something more fluid, a collective built around the idea of ‘creatives with agency’. In essence, they are taking back control, not just of the agency model, applying creative thinking to every part of the business and eschewing corporate fluff, but of their own lives. 

“We want to create a model that works for us,” explains Maasri. “I mean, it’s unconventional that we’re five creative directors opening an agency. Everybody thinks it’s going to fail. But in reality, we’re trying to create something that resonates with all of us. Because when we’re all together, it’s explosive. The brainstorming, the thinking. It’s that type of collaboration, friendship, respect, and trust that gives the work its energy—and gives us the confidence to build something on our own terms.”

“People say it’s never gonna work, ‘You’re too many creatives, you need to be diverse’,” adds Salibi. “But it’s working. I’m so happy about what we’re building here. We’re bringing creativity back to the forefront, giving it the importance it deserves. We firmly believe that integrating creativity early in any process is a game-changer. It’s often introduced too late, limiting its potential. Communication thrives on creativity, and we’re proving that by bringing creative thinking into every business discussion, we can achieve surprising and positive outcomes.”

Read the Room is building a model that prioritises creative and personal freedom, with flexibility, understanding, trust, and the ability to work from anywhere, as core principles. Salibi remains in Beirut; El Khoury and Asmar are based in Paris; Farra lives in Italy; and Maasri divides her time between Brazil and Dubai, though she’s likely to relocate permanently to Beirut. Ensuring such a geographically scattered team stays aligned takes discipline. They meet virtually several times a week, organise priorities, and divide up tasks and projects. When they can, they meet up in the physical world. Maasri laughingly describes a group trip to Italy earlier this year as their first “annual general meeting in person.”

All five originally met at Leo Burnett Beirut, forming a creative partnership that would evolve into a deep and lasting friendship. For years, circumstances kept their shared dream on hold, with each leaving the agency at different times. El Khoury, for example, moved to Paris in 2022, while Maasri and Salibi departed in 2023. “I think the summer we left was the first time we were all together in Lebanon,” says Maasri. “I remember we went to a beach club in the north, and we sat down and were like, ‘Are we going to do this or not? It’s now or never.’”

They have since collaborated with model Nour Arida and singer Haifa Wehbe to combat online sexual harassment and partnered with women’s rights NGO Abaad to raise awareness of violence against women during times of conflict. In October, they joined forces with Arida again, teaming up with Front Row Filmed Entertainment and Different Productions (the showrunners of Dubai Bling) to create Confidence is Queen, an upcoming reality series celebrating empowerment, vulnerability, and sisterhood.

In January, they will launch a creative consultancy arm designed for both brands and agencies. Working for other agencies is an unusual move, although not unheard of, and may ruffle a few feathers, admits Masri, but “that’s usually what happens right before things actually change, and the truth is: the industry has already outgrown its old rules.”

“With shrinking internal teams and accelerated delivery demands, agencies often face critical capability gaps, especially in senior creative and strategic leadership,” she adds. “Our role is to fill those gaps. We partner with agencies as a flexible extension of their team, offering high-level creative direction, concept development, and problem-solving without the overhead of full-time hires. It’s a modern model built for the realities of the industry today. So instead of competing, we collaborate. We partner with agencies to bring in senior-level creative and strategic support exactly when they need it.”

As Read the Room prepares to take the plunge with its consultancy offering in the new year, the founders are hoping that success can emerge just as powerfully from empathy, freedom, and friendship as it can from the hard-nosed corporate behaviour of wider adland.