“The rise of the Indie” agencies. The headline is everywhere, the panels are everywhere and I’m here for it.
As a proud indie agency owner I went to a panel that was meant to celebrate the Indies and to get inspired. Instead, I came home frustrated with the talk. The below isn’t meant as a criticism of the panel or indie ad agencies, it’s meant more as a reality check of our current state.
As I said, I own an independent media agency. I consider us at the beginning of our journey and humbly successful. We work with some notable brands, have a strong Point of View about the marketplace, and employ some of the brightest and best in the business. Most importantly, we do effective work. Marketers who work with us often get promoted because of our work. I say that for context.
Tough choices make experienced entrepreneurs
If you are a young up-and-comer in the industry, fed up with the state of things, you might be inclined to say “when I own my shop, I’ll do things differently”. I know I did and I’ve heard others say it, too. So you go to panels to see how Indies work and learn a few things. You want real advice. But real advice is hard to come by.
On this panel, only one of the four panelists representing Indies had actually started one. That’s not a bad thing. The panelists were by all accounts some of the best advertising minds in Canada. I only point this out to illustrate a point: regardless of how much entrepreneurial spirit your ad agency has — and let me tell you the independent shops are overflowing with said spirit — joining an established business does not make you an entrepreneur. You know who is an entrepreneur? My father in-law who came to this country with zero money, worked a miserable less-than-minimum wage delivery job for an impossibly long time and somehow saved enough money to buy the whole store and eventually the building it was in. Yet he has zero trophies to show for it. I’m not saying only founders work hard. No! My point is: the distinction matters. Because the people who start things, the people who put it all on the line, are the ones who have to make tough choices. And tough choices give you perspective.
The work matters; perspective matters more
Which brings me to my next point: perspective. The theme of the night was that “the work” is everything. Ground breaking, award winning, drool-worthy work is all that matters. At one point someone asked “what about the marketers who don’t want earth-shattering work, but just good service?” Everyone on the panel made a face like they were looking for a foul smell. “I wouldn’t want to work with them”. Except the guy who actually started his shop. He said: “Listen, we started wanting to do big stuff, but big stuff is hard to come by and we needed to make money. So we started a sister company that does the everyday work, too!” Sir, I respect that.
Reality check number one: You want to start an indie agency? You’re going to do work you don’t like. Everyone who has been an entrepreneur for more than a week knows that. There is pride in that. It doesn’t mean the work doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean the work isn’t good. And it certainly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think big. It just means it won’t clean up at the awards that year. Most things won’t. It’s still honest work. A mentor of mine once said: Chase the work you love, but love the work you have. So when a bunch of people who haven’t started a business tell you to say no to work that you don’t like, please know that they’re giving you bad advice because they lack perspective. If you’re starting a shop and you find yourself formatting annual reports, keep going. Your time will come, too. In the meantime, give them the best damn annual report they’ve ever seen.
The same pie for the past 20 years
But how do you go about starting an agency, anyways? If you’re unhappy, just start one, the panel claimed. All you need is courage, vision, and some connections: infinite glory is a few phone calls away. That’s bad advice number two. Here the panel is misrepresenting what it takes to start an agency. First, by a long shot the most important ingredient of an indie agency is connections. This is a relationship business. So how do you make connections in this industry? Well you can be male, white, rich, go to a good school, and play golf or hockey or ski. Any combination of the above will certainly turbo boost your connection making. (Sidebar: I’m male and I ski, if you’re wondering). For the rest, build a good career in advertising first and make friends. Lots of them. And give back to the industry. Teach, volunteer, show up. Do that for a very long time and you’ll make friends who want to work with you.
Because here is reality check number two: the advertising pie in Canada is not really growing much. From the last Canadian Media Concentration Report published in 2021: “advertising spending as a portion of the economy…has stayed relatively fixed for a very long period of time.” The report looks at many different measures, the most interesting one is advertising spending per capita in Canada, which grew an anemic 0.8% from 2008 to 2019. I am not saying this to scare anyone. But what I am saying is that competition is increasing amongst ad agencies with low barriers to entry in a market that hasn’t really grown. Take from that what you will, but maybe courage and vision are not your main ingredients for success.
Look, at the end of the day, I love the Indies. I am proud of their work. The good ones inspire us all. I wish them unimaginable success so that they can continue to inspire us and show us what is possible. I wish them decades of growth, here at home and globally so that they can show what Canadian marketers are made of. But above all, I wish them some humility and perspective. Because I see the hubris that I saw in network shops decades ago now show its ugly head on indie panels. And you know what they say:
“You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”