It’s been an unprecedented and brutal week for the promoting business. The finalization of Omnicom Group’s $13 billion acquisition of Interpublic Group (IPG) (the largest takeover in promoting historical past) is affecting tens of hundreds of employees—most instantly the 4,000 anticipated to be laid off by the top of the yr.
Each Omnicom and IPG personal many alternative advert company manufacturers, all of which might be profoundly impacted by the merger. Omnicom is retaining solely McCann from the IPG roster of company networks, whereas folding FCB into BBDO, and each DDB and MullenLowe into TBWA, with the intention to obtain Omnicom Chairman and CEO John Wren’s goal of $750 million in synergies.
These are greater than only a assortment of acronyms, although. They’re main company manufacturers, constructed over many years and generations, that can now disappear as their guardian holding firm fights to develop, survive, and stay aggressive.
You’d be forgiven when you suppose the advert world is an alphabet soup of who’s consuming who. However there may be one other aspect to the enterprise that’s steering clear from the publicly traded drama. Unbiased businesses are rising in quantity, and within the scale and scope of labor they’re being assigned by main manufacturers.
It’s a development that has been bubbling up for years. In response to an Ibis World report, the variety of U.S. advert businesses grew 2.2% from 2019 to 2024. Even anecdotally, there was a surge in new creative shops. Isle of Any, for instance, was launched in January by former Droga5 execs, and has already accomplished work for The New York Occasions, A24, OpenAI, and Coinbase.
A part of the indie increase is undoubtedly a cultural correction to the mess that’s main advert holding firms, as expertise flees company forms for greener, extra artistic pastures. But it surely’s greater than that at this level. Lately, main manufacturers have proven an elevated willingness to work with these small outlets regardless of (or due to) their dimension.
For years, impartial company Rethink has been profitable business awards and getting enterprise outcomes for Heinz. Mom, an company based in London 30 years in the past, has a variety of huge shoppers, together with Buick, Uber, Cheerios, and Stella Artois. And, in fact, impartial company Wieden+Kennedy is thought for its work for Nike, McDonald’s, Ford, and Michelob Extremely.
Amid all of the advert world chaos, I spoke to indie company execs at award-winning outlets Rethink, Tombras, Joan Artistic, Haymaker, and Mom about what the advert business panorama seems like from their vantage level at this second. As expertise, knowledge, and, specifically AI, ranges the taking part in area in so some ways, these independents see a definite aggressive benefit within the mixture of unique artistic and strategic pondering. Most crucially, although? They see shoppers—not buyers—as their main stakeholders.
Holding firm drama
The large consolidation of IPG-owned advert businesses is the newest in an ongoing development amongst publicly traded promoting firms over the previous decade to spice up earnings and effectivity. In 2018, holding firm WPP mixed Wunderman and J. Walter Thompson (JWT) into Wunderman Thompson, and VML and Younger & Rubicam into VMLY&R. Then in 2023, it mixed all of them into simply VML.
How did that work out? WPP shares are down greater than 60% yr up to now, and have hit a quarter-century low. Experiences emerged final month that France-based holding firm Havas was exploring an acquisition or stake in WPP. Havas has denied the reports, however it’s the state of the business that made it so plausible.
Jay Kamath, founder and chief artistic officer of Haymaker, says there’s nothing mistaken with mergers if there’s a sturdy imaginative and prescient behind it. “These aren’t visionary mergers, they’re survival mergers. The mannequin is growing older, margins are shrinking, they usually suppose scale is a life raft,” says Kamath, who believes scale does little to actually assist shoppers. In actuality, it’s velocity, not scale that manufacturers care about as they vie for purchasers’ more and more divided consideration. “They want sooner groups who convey sharper concepts and are accountable companions,” he says.
Dooley Tombras, president of Tombras, a Knoxville, Tennessee-based company with extra places of work throughout the U.S. and in Buenos Aires, sees holding firms as a mannequin in managed decline. As holding firms proceed to consolidate to compensate for a lack of top-line development, the winners will possible be within the impartial house.
“As they consolidate manufacturers, places of work, and folks to ship value synergies to Wall Road, they are going to naturally shore as much as shield the billion-dollar-plus shoppers,” Tombras says. “Many main nationwide manufacturers spending within the $50 million to $100 million annual funds degree will get misplaced within the shuffle and look to make a transfer. And it’ll possible be to a scaled impartial.”
Benefit: impartial
Tombras’s idea appears to be resonating. Geoff Cottrill, former CMO of Coca-Cola, Converse, and Topgolf, not too long ago commented on LinkedIn: “If I have been nonetheless a CMO, I’d be searching for artistic companions outdoors these huge machines.”
So I known as him up and requested him to elaborate. His reply must be encouraging to any indie company, and to lots of the impending holding firm exiles seeking to be employed. “Marketing, as an business, has form of misplaced the plot,” says Cottrill of the business’s infatuation with knowledge, AI, and cash.
He notes, ”If you happen to’re a midsized model attempting to combat for consideration, needing to get the correct artistic concepts, get the correct service ranges, account administration, you’re higher off with a smaller, extra nimble artistic store like Wieden+Kennedy or somebody like Opinionated” (an impartial advert store out of Portland, Oregon, whose shoppers embrace Adidas, Panda Specific, and Hinge).
For Lisa Clunie, founder and CEO of New York-based Joan, being impartial is a superpower. “Manufacturers need companions who can prototype, pivot, and produce with out ready for multinational approval chains,” she says.
This isn’t a brand new idea. Again in 2021, Domino’s took its model to a small, 23-person indie store known as WorkInProgress. On the time, the pizza chain’s then-CMO, Artwork D’Elia, told Ad Age, “I actually really feel that the impartial company mannequin offers us extra flexibility and fewer distractions.”
Tombras believes that model and tradition are at an inflection level given the proliferation of AI. Machine worth will lower, he argues, whereas human worth is poised to skyrocket. “The entire purpose manufacturers have gone to businesses within the first place is to get extremely distinctive views on find out how to remedy enterprise issues,” he says. “Independents are in an exponentially higher place to draw expertise as a result of individuals are tribal; we wish to play for groups.”
For Teri Miller, U.S. CEO of Mom, the holding firm enterprise mannequin, and now consolidation, feels one million miles away from what is definitely taking place on the bottom within the enterprise of creativity. “It’s only a completely completely different vocabulary, rule set, physique language,” she says. “Purchasers who’ve employed Independents as an antidote perceive why: We all know who we’re, why we exist, what our strengths are. We aren’t attempting to be all the pieces to everybody.”
Artistic promoting versus Public Firm
I’ve been protecting manufacturers and advert businesses in a technique or one other for nearly 20 years, and I’ve seen that nice artistic work isn’t unique to impartial businesses. Companies owned by holding firms, together with these being shuttered by means of the Omnicom consolidation, have produced unbelievable work over many years. In reality, McCann, FCB, the Martin Company, and TBWA/Worldwide have been all on Quick Firm’s 2025 Most Innovative Companies list earlier this year.
Nonetheless, holding firm businesses are going through greater challenges, because the media panorama continues to fragment and the calls for of shoppers have develop into extra complicated and instant. In a media period that prioritizes value and effectivity, the good work these businesses are making more and more feels prefer it’s regardless of being a part of a public holding firm, not as a result of of it.
The worldwide publicly traded conglomerate nonetheless has benefits in scale, significantly in media shopping for. However there is no such thing as a discernible benefit by way of fixing enterprise issues with artistic concepts and technique. Joan’s Clunie says creativity and public possession aren’t enemies, they’re simply unhealthy roommates. Whereas public firms optimize for shareholder worth, impartial businesses optimize for artistic worth.
“When you want to hit quarterly targets, the straightforward strikes are value cuts, procurement offers, and operational tweaks,” Clunie says. “The dangerous transfer? Betting on a daring artistic thought that may take two years to show itself. Guess which one will get the inexperienced mild at 11:59 p.m. earlier than earnings?”
It’s not that public firms can’t do sensible work, she says. “It’s that their wiring makes the protected selection simpler and the fascinating selection tougher. And in our enterprise, fascinating often wins. Independence means we are able to take the lengthy view. That’s not romantic—it’s structural.”
