Two Sydney independents teamed up to answer a question small studios keep asking: where did search go?

On 2 November, independent culture consultancy REALMS and digital agency SEEN launched Find:Seek, a joint offering designed to help brands respond to a shift every small studio is feeling: people increasingly discover things through social platforms, creators and online communities rather than traditional search engines.

The service combines search intelligence with cultural strategy. Through a four-stage process — Diagnose, Define, Plan and Measure — it identifies the questions customers are actually asking, evaluates how visible a brand and its competitors are in the places those questions get answered, and turns the findings into content, channel and creator strategies. It is already working with its first brand clients and includes a live dashboard tracking performance and progress.

At the centre is a framework the partners call the “Content Realm”, built around priority customer questions: what to create, where it should live, and which creators or voices a brand should collaborate with to be discoverable.

REALMS co-founders Rhian Mason and Elly Brand put the premise plainly: “Everything about how people discover brands is changing, but the fundamentals of good marketing haven’t.” SEEN founder Lachlan Gill adds that discoverability has moved beyond Google — customers are already searching for brands on social platforms, but most brands cannot see how they are showing up there.

There are two lessons here for independent teams. The first is the shift itself: if discovery now happens in feeds and comments, the work studios do for clients — and for themselves — has to be found there, not just ranked on Google. The second is the shape of the move: two small firms with complementary skills joined forces instead of competing, and packaged the combination as one offer. For independents, partnership is often the cheapest way to sell a bigger service.

Read the announcement at Creative Brands Mag.