Independence is not a brand position, it’s a business model
Ori Gold, CEO of Bench Media, looks at the recent wave of agency acquisitions and argues that independence is a business model, not just a positioning.
Ori Gold
A real shift is happening in the Australian agency market. Independent agencies are growing faster, winning larger briefs, and attracting stronger talent than at any point in the past decade.
This shift is driven by innovation, economics and how modern marketers operate.
Clients appear to be moving away from complexity, conflicted incentives and bloated models because the market no longer rewards them. AI has compressed timelines, reduced execution advantages and raised the bar on thinking. Speed now matters more than scale. Localised expertise beats global playbooks, and senior judgment outperforms layers of processes. In this environment, independence, once seen as a trade-off, has become a genuine competitive advantage.
I’m all for indies (have worked in a few and still work in one) and I agree there are some things that really kill an indie when they’re bought out by a group. But I’d also say a lot of the problems you outline are not just a function of being a part of a group. They are a function of scale. They tend to happen naturally once agencies reach a certain size. There’s no way an agency of 150-200 will give you more access to its founders and senior leadership, will be as agile, or have less layers, process or bureaucracy than an agency of 25-50 or even 100, even if it is independent.
The likes of H+C, Thinkerbell and Special Group are all that size now. It will be interesting to see if they are actually resisting or can continue to resist these complexities operating at this kind of scale.
Really well written piece Ori, thank you. And an interesting note by the commenter above re the size of the agency as opposed to the ownership structure that delivers on what you’re suggesting. Your thoughts?