Big trouble in big agencies.
Mega-agencies are collapsing under their own size, consolidating out of desperation, not strategy. The future belongs to agile independents who move fast, stay focused, and deliver smarter, human-first work.
Holding company agencies? More like holding-on-for-dear-life agencies.
A major trend in the advertising world right now is the rapid consolidation of mega-agencies. And it’s causing upheaval in our industry.
It doesn’t appear to be driven by strategy or opportunity. It feels like desperation — a somewhat frantic attempt to grab talent, services, and clients in the hopes that something clicks. The prevailing philosophy seems to be: grow fast, swallow as much as possible, and sort it out later. If you stack every possible service on top of each other, perhaps the sheer volume of capabilities compensates for the obvious lack of clarity.
In a recent Adweek survey of employees at the big holding companies, nearly half said they were actively looking to make a change. Many are looking to move to smaller independent agencies, while others are leaving the industry altogether. So if you’re hiring a mega-agency, just know: at least half the team working on your business may already be mentally checked out. And it’s not their fault. They’re working under leadership that believes growth is achieved not by delivering success for clients, but by swallowing up shops and cobbling them together. The result? Cultural chaos, knee-jerk layoffs, and a toxic churn that undermines morale.
To them, more is better. More tools. More services. More people. But that’s not how success is built.
You see, while the world is changing, principles are not. The future doesn’t belong to those with the most systems. It belongs to the agile, moving into new areas with little red tape. Try fast, fail occasionally, succeed boldly, and apply. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. And the bigger the agency, the harder that becomes. Their scale becomes their weakness.
With a heaping helping of bias, I believe independent agencies are built for this new and coming age. We give clients the chance to think sharper and smarter. We may not have the same scale, but we have the same tools, and we use them with far more intent and care. Big agencies don’t invent these tools, and we all have access to them (clients included). The difference is how and why we use them and how we empower our clients for THEIR success. Not just ours.
When you hire a mega-agency, you’re often buying a pile of capabilities without coherence. These companies tend to treat their client rosters like a stock portfolio: a few hits, a few misses, and as long as the hits keep the revenue flowing, the misses are just a cost of doing business. As long as they are acquiring new clients at a rate faster than attrition, all is well.
Independent agencies don’t have that luxury, and we simply don’t want it. Trial and error at scale isn’t a strategy. It’s irresponsible, wasteful, and an opportunity lost at too much cost.
The best independent shops thrive because we deliver tight, executable, informed, and flexible paths based on powerful strategies and authentically creative thinking. We help our clients win early, win responsibly, and — ultimately — win big.
