Long live non-aligned independent agencies!

A few months back, in one of my articles I spoke about how the talent in the advertising industry is migrating to start agencies of their own and churning out some very good pieces of work. How these small shops are pulling the rug from under the feet of big ones.

It’s been rumoured that Pepsi has officially signed Taproot India as their third global agency in the wake of their successful ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 campaign. While Taproot is progressing by leaps and bounds, Creativeland Asia’s performance at this year’s Goafest impressed one and all. Taproot and Creativeland Asia have pioneered the resurgence of small start-up agencies. Minakshi Achan (ex NCD Rediffusion-Y&R) and Mahesh Chauhan (ex CEO Rediffusion-Y&R) quit their agency to start a communications agency of their own christened Salt Brand Solutions.

Not much time has passed by since Salt began and the agency already has won Kaya Skin Clinic following a multi-agency pitch. A common trend that is witnessed in the agency sector is that when stalwarts leave an agency they are followed by some people in their agency and/or brands.

Aggy (Co-founder, Taproot) pulled Pepsi when he left JWT while Kaya followed Mahesh and Minakshi to Salt from Rediffusion. Priti Nair who has tremendous experience of working on FMCG brands like Heinz, Coca Cola, HUL, P&G et al. teamed up with Nagessh Pannaswami (BBDO Mumbai) to launch Curry-Nation. Focusing on FMCG business, Curry-Nation has recently added Cavin Kare’s- Fairever, Spinz and Hi5 to its growing kitty of clients.

The above trend while encouraging for clients and talented young professionals is a dangerous one for monolith agencies. It is a threatening trend for such agencies, an insinuation to pay attention, to pull up their socks and offer their best talents to every client. No more can they afford to take their clients for granted as clients today have got a choice to move to an independent agency. While the top end of the business is being dictated by groups like WPP, Omnicom and Publicis- the Goliaths, the David’s too are making some noticeable inroads.

Clients today have options.

Not anymore do they have to compromise to pedestrian work from multinational agencies. They have alternatives of hiring small agencies for projects. So the scenario paints a picture akin to the following:

(a) Warning for the big agencies—the ball is in their court now. Unless they allocate their best resources to their clients, it won’t be long before the client starts looking for other options

(b) MNC clients—today have an option of hiring independent agencies and getting the best out of them

(c) Great for small creative agencies- with other similar agencies flourishing and clients giving them their due share of attention and importance.

While this puts the big agencies in a spot of bother but it is an encouraging and healthy trend for people who dream of starting their own agency some day. For the industry it will result in the rise of standards elevating the quality of work produced by us.

(The author is National Creative Director, Leo Burnett)