Are Smaller Independents Gaining the Edge in Agency Land?

Marketing teams are being asked to do more with less, move faster than ever and demonstrate measurable value. In that climate, the agency you pick matters as much as the work itself.

The general assumption is still that bigger means safer. But when delivery starts outweighing strategic challenge, or outputs are prioritised over outcomes, that perceived safety can quickly become expensive. Marketers are increasingly reassessing what they actually need from an agency relationship – and where an independent creative agency can offer a genuine advantage.  

The real question isn't “who's biggest?” 

In my experience having also worked client-side, the question should shift from "who has the biggest network?" to "who is closest to our goals, prepared to share accountability for our results, and willing to challenge us when it matters?”

Independent agencies are built differently. Decisions happen faster, senior people stay close to the work, and the agency's reputation rests on your results, not a share price.

Michael Farmer, the management consultant who's spent more than 30 years studying agencies, puts it bluntly in his podcast: independents are “much easier to work with” because “the big enterprise agencies are actually much more worried about generating margins for the holding company than they are about almost anything else."

And as AI adoption grows and potentially speeds production, the part that intrinsically adds significantly more value is someone senior who will add that strategic and commercial lens, and most importantly, will tell you when something isn’t working.

The big groups are already heading the other way: WPP’s strategy update shows £500m of annualised cost savings, rising severance, and the whole business folded into four units around an AI platform. When protecting margin at that scale is the priority, senior craft and close client attention are the first things to go.

What you actually gain

When a senior member of an independent agency pitches for your business, they usually stay involved. There are fewer layers between idea and execution, and faster decisions and incentives that line up, so the agency wins when you do. They are not driven by shareholder pressure, cross-sell quota, or a global network to feed.

The IPA's research on partnering for growth lands on the same point again and again: stronger relationships produce stronger commercial outcomes. When goals are genuinely aligned, the work is better and the partnership lasts.

In practice, that looks like:

• Senior attention and direct access, not junior churn
  
  

• Commercial accountability, not just task completion
  
  

• Transparent reporting against measurable outcomes
  
  

• Partnership with process, and agility without losing rigour

The best partners don't just take the brief, they improve it 

There's a real difference between an agency that completes the brief and one that improves outcomes. We had a client recently who was set on creating content for a specific media channel. We did the research and showed them that their audience wasn’t actually there. We didn’t stand our ground to be difficult. We did it to make sure their marketing budget was working for them. 

This type of challenge usually comes down to a handful of honest questions. What are we actually solving, what does success look like, and how will we measure it? 

Strategic pushback at the right level is one of the most undervalued things an agency can offer. Senior, experienced, commercially aware. And it only happens reliably when the people doing the challenging are also the people doing the work. In bigger agencies that link can break, but in an independent one, it rarely does. 

“Big feels safer” deserves a second look

I understand the pull towards a globally recognised name: procurement is comfortable, senior stakeholders feel reassured, and it looks like the lower-risk option.

But perceived safety and actual effectiveness aren't the same thing. The real risk usually sits somewhere else, in the work that goes unchallenged and in the campaigns measured by activity rather than impact.

WARC's research is consistent on this: relationship quality is what moves the needle on creative and commercial results. Size isn’t what matters: alignment is, and a partner that shares accountability for the work. Clients need and deserve sharper thinking, closer collaboration, and someone who'll own the end results with you. That’s what you get with an independent agency partner.

And independence doesn’t mean limited capacity. A good independent runs its own network, a black book of trusted specialists it can call on to put exactly the right skills on each brief, at the right price, all focused on the same outcome. That’s how smaller agencies scale: efficiently, drawing in best-in-class talent when a brief demands it rather than carrying a fixed roster you pay for whether you need it or not.

It’s the same thinking behind genuine inter-agency collaboration: we partner with specialists like Fable and Opinium when the work calls for it, so you get the right expertise without the overhead of a holding company.

Independence isn't simply a positioning exercise for us. It is what we are, and it’s how we’ve worked for more than 30 years now. Close to our clients where we’re unafraid to say what we think, and ultimately driven by outcome over output.

If this resonates and you are rethinking a partnership, we'd love to talk.