Brands have a stark media agency choice: convenience or nourishment
Agency consolidation threatens creativity and service quality. Dave Levett, founder of Murmur, explains why clients should choose independent expertise over mass-produced solutions.
In 12 months our industry will look back on 2025 and the key theme of the Year of the Snake will be “consolidation”.
Put simply, market forces are collapsing businesses into and amongst each other at a rate of knots.
The holding companies have been quietly shuttering and smashing together storied brands for years now. WPP has been chief amongst them, merging creative and media agencies with abandon. We’ve now got the ongoing $13 billion merger of Omnicom & IPG and locally we’ve just heard of Publicis’ acquisition of Atomic 212 – Australia’s largest independent media agency.
If Michelin stars are a sign of success in the restaurant industry, then a parallel can be drawn to our industry awards – global ones in particular (internationally recognised) such as Cannes. Looking at the recipients of these awards, seems to me the networks fare quite well.
Im a cheerleader of innovation and take my hat off to those selling it. But proof is in the pudding and size certainly doesn’t guarantee an innovative approach. Having hired from Indies, I find the staff often lacking in real depth of knowledge due to not being exposed to clients sophisticated enough to demand innovation or enough innovative technology or even structure around them to teach them as well.
Also – the pathway to Indies starting is often more borne of an entrepreneurial spirit wanting to run their own business and reap the financial rewards or working flexibility they couldn’t get at a network. Id hazard a guess it was rarely because there wasn’t enough innovation on offer. Some may call that a vanity project. Then of course is the sell at the end…
Really? This again? I have worked in media agencies for 25 years. almost exactly 50/50 Indie / Multinational. I have seen no evidence that innovation or personal investment the work produce4d had anything to do with whether in was an indie or not. I get that you need to spruik your business and fair play for backing yourself, but the fact that you’ve used consolidation as a trojan horse to roll out the same story as every other indie doesn’t exactly speak to innovation does it?
While I appreciate your perspective, I’d have to disagree. Obviously there are talented and committed individuals across the industry. But the point being made isn’t that indies have a monopoly on innovation, rather that their structural independence often enables it in ways that holding groups simply can’t match.
Consolidation in the industry has led to a prioritisation of scale and efficiency, often at the cost of flexibility and bespoke client solutions. That’s not an attack; it’s a reality of how large networks operate. Indies, by nature, don’t have the same commercial pressures or layers of approval that can stifle unconventional thinking. That’s not a rehashed sales pitch—it’s a fundamental difference in how these businesses are built.
Fair play for challenging the argument, but let’s not pretend that structure doesn’t shape outcomes.
I used to think that what many clients wanted was Michelin star meals but at all-you-can-eat buffet prices. However, I don’t think even that holds true any longer. Today, I think the majority of clients are more than happy ordering day-to-day from a short menu of digital platform burgers and fries, all ready to go now and costing no more than $5. What is ordered, and how it is ordered, defines what is received far more than whether the supplying agency is network or indie.