What is an independent agency?
An independent agency is one that nobody else owns. Its founders, partners or employees hold the equity; there is no holding company above it setting targets, no shareholders waiting on a quarterly number, no sister agencies it is obliged to work with. Independents range from a two-person design studio to a few of the most respected creative shops in the world, and what they share is not size but control: they decide what to make, who to make it for and how to run the place.
The word independent is defined against the networks. Since the 1980s most famous agency brands have been bought by holding companies like WPP, Omnicom and Publicis, so an agency that has stayed outside that system, or was started by people who left it, calls itself independent to say something about how it works.
Why it matters
Why independent agencies matter
Independence shows up in the work. An agency that answers only to its clients and its own taste can turn down a brief that is wrong for it, keep a senior team on a project because the project deserves it, and take a creative risk without clearing it with a parent company's risk committee. Brands feel the difference as speed, candor and a point of view that does not soften in the second meeting.
It also shows up in who stays. Independents are where a lot of the industry's best creatives go when they tire of the networks, because the equity is real, the decisions are close and the work carries their name. For a client that means the people who pitch are the people who deliver, and they are still there next year.
In practice
How an independent agency works in practice
- 01
An independent is run by its owners, which usually means a founder or a small group of partners who are also the senior creative, strategic and production leads. Structure is flat. There are fewer account layers between the client and the makers, and the owners are in the work rather than above it. Revenue has to cover costs without a parent to absorb a bad quarter, so independents tend to be careful about overhead and honest about scope, and the good ones keep a bench of trusted freelancers rather than a payroll sized for the busiest week.
- 02
Clients hire independents for the work that matters most: the rebrand, the launch film, the campaign that has to be remembered. Many brands run an independent creative shop alongside a network agency for media and global coordination, which plays to each one's strengths. Independents compete for that work on the strength of their portfolio and their relationships, and they grow by referral far more than by pitching.
At RIOT
Independent agencies at RIOT
RIOT is an independent creative agency and production studio, founded in New York's East Village in 2015 and now working from Hudson Yards and Clifton, New Jersey. Independence is why we have been able to work with Coach for more than a decade with the same people in the room, why houses like Tiffany & Co. and teams like the Washington Commanders get the founders on their work, and why we can spend part of the year building our own products, Krova, AltSounds, Muvvoo and vandal_, without asking anyone's permission.
Watch out
What people get wrong about independent agencies
Assuming independent means small or local. Some independents are hundreds of people across several countries, and some of the best-known campaigns of the past twenty years came from them. Independence is about ownership, not headcount.
The other mistake is assuming independents cannot scale. They scale differently, through partners, freelancers and production studios rather than through a network's offices, and for most brands that is enough. Where a brand genuinely needs media buying in forty markets, an independent will tell you so and recommend who to call.
